Russia
Russia 100305
Basic Political Developments
• Trend.az: Turkish FM: Turkish MPs leave for Russia for consultations - The Turkish parliamentarians have left for Russia for consultations on the so-called "Armenian genocide", Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying by CNN Turk.
• Prime-Tass: Mar 16: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky to take part in meeting of Russia–Belarus Union State’s council of ministers
• RIA: Russia to keep but not build up nuclear deterrent – Medvedev - "Today we have no need to build up the potential of our strategic deterrence, but possession of nuclear weapons is a key condition for Russia to pursue its independent policies, for safeguarding its sovereignty," Medvedev said during a meeting at the Defense Ministry.
• BarentsObserver: Russia test-launched ballistic missile from the Barents Sea - A Russian nuclear submarine Thursday morning launched a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile of the Sineva-class from the Barents Sea.
• The Chosun Ilbo: N.Korea, Russia Discuss Nuclear Talks - During a bilateral meeting on Thursday, visiting North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Goong Seok-woong and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin exchanged views on issues of mutual concern, with particular attention on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
• Bloomberg: Russia Will Own Majority of Turkish Nuclear Plant, Zaman Says - Russia is likely to own at least 51 percent of the shares in the company building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, Zaman newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.
• Reuters: Ukraine offers gas pipe deal for price cuts-paper
• RFE/RL: Ukrainian President Yanukovych Visits Russia
• Itar-Tass: Medvedev, Yanukovich to discuss gas, Black Sea fleet
• BBC: Ukraine leader in key Russia trip
• Russia Today: New Ukrainian leader looks for a fresh start in Moscow
• Itar-Tass: Yanukovich to discuss in Kremlin gas among other issues – interview
• AFP: Russia, Ukraine to mend fences as Yanukovych visits
• Steel Guru: Ukraine must strictly observe all gas accords – Russia
• Itar-Tass: Russia forwards note to US over Russian boy’s death - Russian diplomats have handed over a note to the U.S. Department of State in connection with the death of Ivan Skorobogatov, seven years old, a Russian national, a representative of the press service of the Russian embassy in Washington told Itar-Tass.
• Reuters: UPDATE 1-More Russia-US poultry talks in coming weeks-USDA
• RIA: Russia calls on the parties to realize the interests of the CIS legal methods
• Rosbalt: Russia will supply CIS to the specific objectives
• Abc.az: Azerbaijan warns Russia about danger of CIS free trade agreement replacement
• Georgian Times: Burjanadze to meet DUMA speaker
• The Financial: Burjanadze on Talks with Putin
• RIA: Russian humanitarian aid arrives in quake-hit Chile
• RIA: Russia completes rotation of peacekeepers in Chad - Russia's contribution to the UN mission in Central African Republic and Chad totals 118 peacekeepers and four Mi-8MT helicopters. The first part of the group departed from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow on Monday.
• Khaleej Times: Dubai Police Chief Denies Russian Criminal Escaped - Lt Major General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Commander-in-Chief of the Dubai Police has denied the news published by Russian News Agency saying that Russian criminal boss, Vladimir Vagin, 44, wanted for murder and awaiting extradition to Russia had escaped from Dubai prison.
• Interfax: Passport in name of militant leader found after armed clash in Ingushetia
• Itar-Tass: Death of warlord Buryatsky to be officially confirmed by genetic study
• RIA: Notorious gang leader reportedly killed in Russia's North Caucasus
• Russia Today: Russian mujahidin mastermind eliminated in North Caucasus
• Itar-Tass: Warlord Saeed Buryatsky eliminated in North Caucasus
• Reuters: RPT-ANALYSIS-Global jihad creeping into Russia's insurgency - Russian insurgency has links to Muslim world; Patronage, funding inching in from abroad
• Today’s Zaman: [EXPAT PROFILE] So much more to Dagestan than meets the eye
• The Moscow Times: Kremlin Tightens Grip on Election Watchdog - President Dmitry Medvedev has installed a Kremlin insider as deputy head of the Central Election Commission, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Thursday, citing an unidentified official close to the agency.
• VTB Capital: Russians react with scepticism to President Medvedev's initiatives to reform the Interior Ministry and modernise Russia - Vedomosti has today published an article on the results of a social poll carried out by Levada-Center. People were asked what their attitude was to President Dmitry Medvedev's reform of the Interior Ministry and his programme to modernise the country. Both sets of answers reflected a strong negative bias.
• The St. Petersburg Times: Medvedev Offers Sweeping Reforms of Criminal Code
• Financial Times: Moscow destroyed Yukos, judges told
• Bloomberg: Russia’s Gold Deficit Shows Us What’s Wrong: Celestine Bohlen - There is no doubt that Russia’s sports bureaucrats have a lot to answer for. But their grotesquely bloated expense accounts aren’t the sole cause of shortcomings in a national sports system that has been neglected for 20 years.
• WSJ: Russian Inventor Has Friends in Kremlin, but Skeptics Outside It - Viktor Petrik Says He Can Turn Radioactive Waste Into Drinking Water
• RIA: Yellow snow falls in Russia's Far East - High winds in Mongolia mixed the clouds from a front with dust and sand, crossed northern China, and then dumped the unique-colored snow in Russia.
• Discover Magazine: Globe-Warning Methane Is Gushing From a Russian Ice Shelf
• The Moscow Times: Mr. Nyet - Whatever happened to the bold statements made between 2004 and 2007 by then-President Vladimir Putin, then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and leading generals that Russia’s new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles were “capable of penetrating any existing or future missile defense systems”? With such confidence in its offensive capabilities, it is odd that Russia has ranked missile defense as its No. 4 Danger.
• Pravda: Does NATO Really Think Russia is That Silly?
• The Moscow Times: Today in Vedomosti
o Films Lose Takings to Pirates - Russian Internet pirates strip popular films of about $1 million of their takings.
o AvtoVAZ February Sales Down 31%
o Editorial: Putin's and Kudrin's Varying Ideas of Responsible Policy
o Editorial: Bastrykin Wants to Fingerprint Entire North Caucasus
o Olympic Ticket Agent Faces Charges for HIgh Ticket Prices
• Russia Today: 05 March, 2010 in Russian Newspapers
o Gaztea.ru: Russia’s GDP numbers are positive for the first time since the advent of the crisis
o Vedomosti: Bastrykin proposed fingerprinting residents of the Caucasus
o Nezavisimaya: The expansion of NATO and Russia’s military doctrine
National Economic Trends
• RBC: Russia's trade surplus creeps up
• Reuters: Russia c.bank shifts again rouble lower trading band
• The Moscow Times: Kudrin Protests as Pensions Increased
• AgriMarket: Russia to avoid selling grains from the intervention fund on the open market
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
• Bloomberg: Gazprom, Lukoil, Mechel, Polyus Gold: Russian Equity Preview
• Russia Today: New retail law comes into effect in Russia - This week has seen a new trade law come into force. It regulates retailers and suppliers in an attempt to make their relationship more transparent and prices lower. Insiders say the effect may be the opposite.
• RBC: Regulators to weigh regional competition - The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) are gearing up to poll entrepreneurs for their assessment of the competitive environment in the regions. For that matter, Russia is developing its own competition assessment techniques for the first time ever, since executive authorities and experts always relied on foreign surveys in the past.
• Bloomberg: Deripaska Said to Pick Bank of China for SMR Share Sale Plan
• Bloomberg: Rusagro Taps Credit Suisse, Alfa, Rencap for May IPO: Kommersant
• Reuters: Russia's Russkoye Morye plans $200 mln IPO—source
• Interfax: NLMK gets 7.75% yield on bonds in 12-mth low for Russian market
• Bloomberg: Norilsk Bids to Process Soviet-Era Copper Stocks to Meet Demand
• SteelOrbis: » Russian quota utilization for Ukraine
• RenCap: Mechel continues optimising its debt burden and raising debt capital for the Elga project
• Bloomberg: Aviva Seeks to Buy Russian Insurers at Quarter Pre-Crisis Price
• Wall Street Journal: The Pitfalls of Buying a Stake in the Russian Dream
• Itar-Tass: Russia to launch project to dispose used cars on March 8
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
• Rigzone: RussNeft Gets Green Light to Develop Russian Field
• Rigzone: Tatneft Puts DCP Technology to Work to Maximize Production
• Georgian Daily: Russia’s Energy Development Drive Slows Down - Against the background of difficult international energy market conditions Russian companies have become less interested in finding new oil and gas fields and developing existing deposits. Notably, the country’s gas monopoly Gazprom dropped its earlier plans to take over a giant Kovykta deposit and has postponed the development of yet another huge project, Shtokman.
Gazprom
• UpstreamOnline: Gazprom signs up for Kudu
• Dow Jones: UPDATE: Gazprom CEO Expects To Return To Pre-Crisis Output Level Soon
• RBC: Gazprom: production to reach pre-crisis level soon
• The Moscow Times: Gazprom Middlemen Face Audit On Exports
• Itar-Tass: Gazprom to earmark RUR 2 bln more for gas supply of Altai Rep
• Reuters: EU gas glut forces Gazprom into Asia –analysts
• EasyBourse: Fitch Upgrades Gazprom International's Notes To 'A-'; Outlook Stable
• Business Insider: Gazprom Has Finally Accepted That Shale Gas Is About To Change The World
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Full Text Articles
Basic Political Developments
Trend.az: Turkish FM: Turkish MPs leave for Russia for consultations
05.03.2010 13:15
The Turkish parliamentarians have left for Russia for consultations on the so-called "Armenian genocide", Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted as saying by CNN Turk.
The South Caucasus is a strategically important region, both for Turkey and for Russia, he added.
U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Thursday adopted 23 votes to 22 a resolution recognizing the so-called "Armenian genocide".
Armenia claims that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915. Making greater efforts to promote the issue internationally, Armenians have achieved its recognition by parliaments of some countries.
Prime-Tass: Mar 16: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky to take part in meeting of Russia–Belarus Union State’s council of ministers
RIA: Russia to keep but not build up nuclear deterrent – Medvedev
11:5305/03/2010
MOSCOW, March 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is not planning to build up its strategic potential, but will keep its nuclear weapons, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.
"Today we have no need to build up the potential of our strategic deterrence, but possession of nuclear weapons is a key condition for Russia to pursue its independent policies, for safeguarding its sovereignty," Medvedev said during a meeting at the Defense Ministry.
BarentsObserver: Russia test-launched ballistic missile from the Barents Sea
2010-03-05
A Russian nuclear submarine Thursday morning launched a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile of the Sineva-class from the Barents Sea.
The launch was made from the Delta-IV class submarine “Tula”, newspaper Kommersant writes, citing the Russian Ministry of Defense’s press service. The launch was a success, and all the targets were hit.
Last time a missile of this type was launched from the submarine Tula was in October 2008. The launch was then witnessed by President Dmitry Medvedev, as BarentsObserver reported. Another Sineva missile was launched in July 2009, this time from the Northern Fleet submarine “Yekaterinburg”.
In the end of January the Russian Northern Fleet got its Delta-IV class submarine “Kareliya” back after five years of modernization which prolonged the submarine’s lifetime with approximately ten years and improved its tactical and technical performance considerably.
Delta IV submarines can carry up to 16 missiles, while the intercontinental missile is reported to be capable of carrying up to 10 nuclear warheads.
The Chosun Ilbo: N.Korea, Russia Discuss Nuclear Talks
Senior government officials of North Korea and Russia held talks in Moscow to discuss issues regarding the resumption of the stalled six-party nuclear talks.
During a bilateral meeting on Thursday, visiting North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Goong Seok-woong and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin exchanged views on issues of mutual concern, with particular attention on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said the two officials also focused on improving bilateral ties as well as expanding political and economic exchanges.
Arirang News / Mar. 05, 2010 11:21 KST
Bloomberg: Russia Will Own Majority of Turkish Nuclear Plant, Zaman Says
By Steve Bryant
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Russia is likely to own at least 51 percent of the shares in the company building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, Zaman newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.
The two countries aim to finish an agreement on the plans by a visit to Turkey by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in May, the newspaper reported from Ankara.
Click here for web link
Last Updated: March 5, 2010 01:45 EST
Reuters: Ukraine offers gas pipe deal for price cuts-paper
Fri Mar 5, 2010 6:23am GMT
MOSCOW, Mar 5 (Reuters) - Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovich hopes to persuade Moscow to cut gas prices gas by a third in return for a 33 percent stake in a future consortium managing Ukraine's pipeline system.
Yanukovich, inaugurated last week, comes to Russia days after his first foreign trip as head of state to Brussels, where he pledged to keep Ukraine on the reform path and ensure it remained a reliable gas transit route. [ID:nLDE6201VT]
"We are open for cooperation and are ready to create a consortium based on equal rights to manage the Ukraine's pipeline system, with Russia getting a share of 33 percent," Kommersant business daily reported on Friday, citing an official in Yanukovich's close circle.
The Ukrainian constitution bans privatisation of the pipeline network and Yanukovich has earlier insisted the infrastructure would not be sold, merely managed by a consortium.
"The basic price of $450 per one thousand cubic metres for Ukraine does not suit anyone in Ukraine. This price is too high and unfair..." the source said.
The Kremlin on Thursday said Ukraine should stick to existing gas deals with Russia, drawing a line on a divisive issue expected to be a key theme during Yanukovich's visit. [ID:nLDE6232BG]
Russia has decided to build North Stream and South Stream -- pipelines that would bypass Ukraine, delivering gas to Europe via the Baltic and Black Seas, and drastically cutting Kiev's transit revenues. (Reporting by Dmitry Sergeyev; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
RFE/RL: Ukrainian President Yanukovych Visits Russia
March 05, 2010
Viktor Yanukovych makes his first visit to Russia today as president of Ukraine.
Talks in Moscow are expected to focus on cash-strapped Ukraine's bill for Russian natural gas.
Analysts say Yanukovych is hoping to renegotiate a 2009 deal negotiated by his election rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, under which Ukraine pays more for Russian gas than most European countries.
However on the eve of Yanukovych's visit, the Kremlin said Ukraine should abide by existing gas deals with Russia.
Yanukovych has pleased Russia by making clear he opposes Ukraine joining NATO, as his predecessor Viktor Yushchenko hoped it would.
Yanukovych has also said he would be open to letting Russia's Black Sea Fleet to stay in Ukraine's port of Sevastopol beyond the official withdrawal deadline of 2017.
Yanukovych, inaugurated last week, comes to Russia days after his first foreign trip as head of state to Brussels, where he pledged to keep Ukraine on the reform path and ensure it remains a reliable gas transit route.
compiled from agency reports
Itar-Tass: Medvedev, Yanukovich to discuss gas, Black Sea fleet
05.03.2010, 06.38
MOSCOW, March 5 (Itar-Tass) -- New Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich is arriving in Moscow on Friday to meet his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and “make a sharp turn” to improve relations between the two countries that fell to an extreme low under his predecessor Viktor Yushchenko.
“Ukraine attributes major importance to relations with Russia. We shall do everything possible to bring our relations back to strategic partnership,” Yanukovich said before the visit.
The Kremlin said gas supplies and transit to Europe will be discussed, as well as border delimitation in the Kerch Strait in the Sea of Azov, and the deployment of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea, as the lease of the naval base in Sevastopol expires in 2017.
Yanukovich previously made it clear he would ask to decrease prices of Russian gas and would in exchange return to the idea of creating a gas transit consortium with the participation of Ukraine, Russia and the European Union. Previous Ukrainian authorities deleted Russia from the plan.
“We shall definitely consider traditional issues in relations between Ukraine and Russia, including gas supplies to Ukraine, gas transit to Europe and the reliability of the (transit) system,” Yanukovich said.
The Kremlin responded “the Russian side insists on the necessity of strict fulfillment of existing agreements and contracts in the (gas) sphere taking into account also the issue of ensuring uninterrupted supplies of the Russian natural gas to European customers.”
BBC: Ukraine leader in key Russia trip
Ukraine's new President, Viktor Yanukovych, says his visit to Moscow will mark the first step in a major improvement in relations with Russia.
Mr Yanukovych has arrived in Moscow ahead of talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and PM Vladimir Putin.
Mr Yanukovych defeated the pro-Western candidate, Yulia Tymoshenko, in last month's election.
He says he wants good relations with Russia and the West, and has already visited EU headquarters in Brussels.
Mending fences
"Ukraine attributes major importance to relations with Russia. We shall do everything possible to bring our relations back to strategic partnership," Mr Yanukovych was quoted as saying by Russia's Itar-Tass news agency before the visit.
He stood as the pro-Russian candidate in Ukraine's 2004 election, but lost in a re-run vote following the Orange Revolution.
Moscow is delighted that the pro-Western leaders of the Orange Revolution have now been defeated, the BBC's Richard Galpin reports from the Russian capital.
The big question is how far the reconciliation between Moscow and Kiev will go, our correspondent adds.
Gas supplies may be a source of friction in the talks. Officials say the Ukrainian leader is expected to lobby for lower gas prices, as well as seek billions in loans from Russia to help cover the country's soaring budget deficit.
Other contentious issues include a border dispute and the fate of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine's port of Sevastopol. Its lease is set to expire in 2017.
Russia Today: New Ukrainian leader looks for a fresh start in Moscow
05 March, 2010, 07:17
Ukraine’s new president Viktor Yanukovich is coming to Moscow with pledges to make a fresh start in Russian-Ukrainian relations.
The ties were damaged under his predecessor, Viktor Yuschenko, by a series of disagreements ranging from Russian gas transit to Europe and distorting joint Soviet history to Ukraine’s fruitless efforts to join NATO and participating on Georgia’s side in the war in South Ossetia against Russia.
Another dividing point is the attitude toward famine in the Soviet Union in 1930s, when a lot of peasants died. Ukrainian leadership insists today that this famine was a pre-planned action of the Soviet leadership against Ukrainians and demand to call it Holodomor (Hunger pest) and genocide against the Ukrainian nation. They refuse to listen to the fact that because of this famine people died not only in Ukraine, but on the territory of modern Russia and Kazakhstan as well.
Acknowledging a huge tragedy, Ukrainian journalist Viktor Pirozhenko is critical about how his country's former authorities perceived it.
He wrote several articles doubting former president Yushchenko’s policies, which brought him to the attention of Ukraine’s security services.
Pirozhenko calls a huge Holodomor monument erected in the center of Kiev a multi-million dollar mistake.
“This perception of the famine was meant to motivate nationalists,” explained Pirozhenko. “It’s negative aspect was used as a weapon to point the finger at Moscow. It was caused by the Kremlin's policies way back then, and it concerned the whole of Soviet Union.”
But former president Yushenko “claimed that it was a direct genocide against Ukrainians and spent millions on building monuments like this and smaller ones across the country.”
Yushenko's views on events of the past caused mixed opinions, not only in his country but internationally as well. His glorification of 1940s insurgent leader Stepan Bandera, seen as a Nazi collaborator by many, was strongly criticized by both Russia and the European Union.
Now Yanukovich, who overtook the presidency in Ukraine, is on a mission to repair that damage – a task which will not be easy, experts say, as he embarks on his first trip as Ukrainian president to Moscow.
“Practically in all spheres involving ties between Russia and Ukraine now, there are huge problems,” noted Vladimir Kornilov, a political analyst from the Institute of CIS Countries. “This is a tough legacy which Yanukovich has inherited from Yushenko. And it’s hard to expect a major breakthrough from his first visit to Russia.”
Kornilov predicted that Yanukovich “might share his views on how to develop economic ties and gas cooperation. But he will hardly be able to achieve anything big.”
Yanukovich has traditionally been seen as a pro-Russian politician in his country for his views on closer ties with Moscow. But despite voicing his intention to rebuild ties with Russia and the CIS, the new Ukrainian leader’s first official visit was to Brussels. And even though that trip seemed merely one for handshakes, experts now say Yanukovich will seek to adopt a policy of balance between Russia and the EU.
“Yanukovich will not be an easy negotiator. He's often been called a pro-Russian politician, but in reality he's a pro-Ukrainian politician,” suggested the Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries, Nikolay Zharikhin. “And he will try hard to protect the interests of his country. But given that both sides now understand the basics of these interests, improving ties between Kiev and Moscow will dominate the agenda.”
Yanukovich flies to Moscow just 48 hours after he celebrated another big domestic victory by ousting from power former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The question is whether the new Ukrainian leader will be as successful in the international arena and will be able to open a new page in Russian-Ukrainian history.
In his very first address to the nation as the country's president, Yanukovich said his main mission was a change in both domestic and foreign policies. Experts are now speculating about which is harder – resuscitating an ailing economy or strengthening ties with Russia and the EU. But one thing is guaranteed for Viktor Yanukovich: when he comes to Moscow for the first time after five years of frozen relationships, he will be met with open arms.
Itar-Tass: Yanukovich to discuss in Kremlin gas among other issues – interview
04.03.2010, 22.24
MOSCOW, March 4 (Itar-Tass) -- Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich is planning to discuss the so-called gas problem during his upcoming visit to Russia which is scheduled for March 5.
“We shall surely discuss, I would say, traditional issues of the relations between Ukraine and Russia including those regarding gas supplies to Ukraine, transit to Europe and the overall reliability of this system,” he said in an interview with the Russia-24 round-the-clock news channel.
“We have known each other for quite a long time, and I can see clearly what the relations between Ukraine and Russia could have been without the five-year’ period of the Orange Revolution that has ruined a lot,” he said. “I can put it the following way: Ukraine’s stable development, including steady gas supplies to Ukraine and Europe.”
“Yushchenko and Timoshenko have made a big mistake having ruined the agreement basis that has been taking shape over all the years of independence,” he said.
It is to the benefit of both countries to “build up a clear ongoing long-term strategic partnership.”
He was asked to comment on the so-called price wars.
“I am sure that partners always can find a compromise,” Yanukovich said.
A high-ranking source in Kremlin told Itar-Tass on Thursday that the upcoming meeting between Dmitry Medvedev and Viktor Yanukovich “is aimed at providing a big impetus to the development of entire spectrum of Russian-Ukrainian relations and helping the reconstruction of the mutually beneficial friendly character of these relations.”
This will be a “first meeting of two presidents after a protracted break in summits,” a source in Russia's presidential administration said. Intensified political dialogue at various levels is one of the first tasks. The Russian-Ukrainian Intergovernmental Commission chaired by the presidents of the two countries will be a key instrument in the dialogue. The Commission is expected to resume its work quite soon.
Our countries have a high potential in trade and economic relations. The trade turnover between Russia and Ukraine made up 22.9 billion dollars in 2009, which was 42.5 percent lower than in the previous year due to the international crisis. Russia's export made up 13.78 billion dollars, and Russia’s import – 9.12 billion dollars. Ukraine’s share in Russian external trade had reached almost five percent. Ukraine ranks sixth among Russia's trade partners.
Joint projects in fuel and energy, including gas, are priority tasks for the two countries. The Russian side proceeds from the necessity to fulfil obligations under agreements and contracts in this sphere and realises the importance of uninterrupted natural gas supplies to European consumers.
AFP: Russia, Ukraine to mend fences as Yanukovych visits
(AFP) – 4 hours ago
MOSCOW — Russia hopes to defuse years of tension with neighbouring Ukraine when newly elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych visits Moscow on Friday for talks with Russian leaders.
Yanukovych, who took office last week after voters resoundingly rejected his pro-Western predecessor Viktor Yushchenko, is scheduled to hold talks and take part in a joint press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
The new Ukrainian leader will also meet Russia's strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to a source close to Yanukovych.
Moscow and Kiev had frosty ties the past five years as Yushchenko sought to bring Ukraine into the NATO military alliance. Last year Medvedev accused Yushchenko of being "anti-Russian" and refused to deal with him.
Yanukovych in contrast has long been seen as a pro-Moscow politician and his power base lies in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east.
His comments in Moscow will be closely watched for signs of where he plans to take Ukraine, a former Soviet republic of 46 million people strategically located between Russia and the European Union.
Yanukovych said in his inauguration speech last week that Ukraine would be "a European, non-aligned state," indicating he would not seek membership in NATO while also staying out of any Russian-led alliances.
He softened his pro-Moscow image, however, by visiting the EU's headquarters in Brussels on Monday for his first foreign trip, where he declared that EU integration would continue to be a priority for Ukraine.
Some Russian media reports said the Kremlin was unhappy about Yanukovych's decision to visit Brussels before Moscow.
Natural gas may be a source of friction at Friday's talks, as Yanukovych has sought revisions to the Russian-Ukrainian gas contract and a better gas price for Ukraine, which was hit hard by the global economic crisis.
But a Kremlin source said ahead of the visit that "Russia insists on the need for strict fulfillment of existing contracts and agreements in this sphere."
Gas has long been a stumbling block between Moscow and Kiev, most notably during the January 2009 gas crisis which caused a cut-off of Russian gas supplies to more than a dozen European countries.
Russia also hopes that Friday's summit will give a "constructive impulse" to talks on the future of its Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Ukraine's port of Sevastopol, the Kremlin source said.
The fleet is based in Sevastopol under a lease that expires in 2017, and the Kremlin is keen to extend the lease. Yushchenko had insisted the fleet should leave in 2017, but Yanukovych has promised to seek a compromise.
Meanwhile Yanukovych is expected to seek Russian help in covering Ukraine's budget deficit as his country reels from a fiscal crisis after its economy shrank 15 percent in 2009.
The Ukrainian daily newspaper Segodnya, which is seen as being close to the Yanukovych camp, has reported that he would seek a loan of between two and five billion dollars from Russia.
Steel Guru: Ukraine must strictly observe all gas accords – Russia
Friday, 05 Mar 2010
Interfax reported that Moscow hopes Ukraine will strictly observe all gas accords with Russia.
Kremlin source told Interfax ahead of Ukrainian President Mr Viktor Yanukovych's visit to Moscow on March 5th that "The Russian side stems from the belief that all agreements and contracts in the gas sphere must be strictly fulfilled, including the pledge to guarantee uninterrupted shipments of Russian gas to European consumers."
He said that joint fuel and energy projects, including projects in the gas sector, rank among priorities in trade and economic cooperation between Russia and Ukraine. Moscow and Kyiv also have good prospects for further strategic interaction in peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
The source said the Russian-Ukrainian summit talks are expected to address cooperation in the transport sector including ways to develop multimodal transport and expanding the scope of transport.
The source said Russian and Ukrainian machine-building companies, including aircraft and rocket building industries, are linked with traditional production, scientific and technical ties.
Trade and economic cooperation between the two countries has good prospects.
(Sourced from Interfax)
Itar-Tass: Russia forwards note to US over Russian boy’s death
05.03.2010, 10.20
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian diplomats have handed over a note to the U.S. Department of State in connection with the death of Ivan Skorobogatov, seven years old, a Russian national, a representative of the press service of the Russian embassy in Washington told Itar-Tass.
“During contacts between Russian diplomats and officials of the U.S. Department of State a note was handed to the American officials, which expressed indignation over the violation by the United States of the bilateral consular convention and the norms of interstate relations,” the press service official said. He stressed that “the U.S. did not inform Russia of the death of the Russian national, which took place in August 2009.”
“The Russian diplomats demanded an account of the circumstances of the death of Ivan Skorobogatov and of the criminal case of his foster parents – Michael and Nannette Craver. The diplomats are going to attend court sessions on their case in Pennsylvania and will keep under control the observance of the interests of Darya Skorobogatova, the sister of the deceased,” the Russian official continued.
He stressed that “the case again raised the question of the need for signing a special Russian-American agreement on the adoption of children.” Aside from it, the incident is reason enough to consider whether or not “Russia should allow the adoption of Russian children by people from the country, which has not ratified the basic U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Aside from the United States, Somalia is the only country that did not sign the Convention.
Vanya Skorobogatov and his twin sister Darya, born in Chelyabinsk, were adopted in 2003 by Michael and Nannette Craver, from the U.S. Together with a new family they were given new names. Ivan was given the name of Nathaniel Michael Craver.
According to the indictment, the boy died on August 25, 2009, in a local hospital as a result of complications, brought about by a scull injury. The foster parent said that on August 19 he had fallen and had hit a stove with his head. On the next morning, according to their information, they had found the boy lying motionless in his bed and had taken him to hospital. The doctors had realised at once that the boy had been dying and had connected him to the life-support equipment.
A medical check-up conducted later revealed that there were some 80 bruises on the boy’s body on different stages of healing, including 20 on his head. The doctors found as well old injuries of internal organs and haematomas. In addition to all that, the boy showed signs of extreme famishing, which specialists could describe as incompatible with the will to live.
Preliminary hearings on the Craver case are scheduled for March 31. According to the U.S. authorities, Dasha Skorobogatova, Vanya’s sister, is in a safe place.
Reuters: UPDATE 1-More Russia-US poultry talks in coming weeks-USDA
Thu, Mar 4 2010
WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - Talks this week between Russia and the United States aimed at ending a dispute that has shut U.S. chicken out of its top export market were constructive, and technical discussions will continue in coming weeks, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Thursday.
It was the second round of meetings on the issue in Moscow for top U.S. agriculture and trade officials with Gennady Onishchenko, the head of Russia's consumer protection watchdog.
Russia suspended U.S. poultry imports on Jan. 19 because it says of a chlorine wash routinely used in U.S. processing plants violates its food safety standards.
The ban has roiled exports from major producers like Tyson Foods Inc and Sanderson Farms Inc . [ID:nN2311280] [ID:nN01113200]
In a separate trade spat, Russia agreed to reopen its market to pork from most U.S. plants after Washington agreed to Moscow's food safety demands. [ID:nLDE622216] (Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by David Gregorio)
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RIA: Russia calls on the parties to realize the interests of the CIS legal methods
Topic: International Economic Forum of the CIS in Moscow
11:31 05/03/2010
MOSCOW, March 5 - RIA Novosti. Russia calls on the external partners of the Commonwealth to realize the interests of the post-Soviet space, legality and transparency of methods, said on Friday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the International Economic Forum of the CIS in Moscow.
"When external partners are their own, we understand the interests, to administer a certain geo-political projects that are not based on pragmatism and common sense, but on different ideological games - it always leads to destabilization. And we would like to see all the external partners of our states in this space in their legitimate interests have implemented the same legitimate, understandable, transparent methods ", -" Lavrov said.
/GOOGLE TRANSLATION/
Rosbalt, 05/03/2010, 11:45 Main feed
Rosbalt: Russia will supply CIS to the specific objectives
MOSCOW, March 5. Russia will make every effort to CIS was filled with "concrete substance for the benefit of its members. This, Itar-Tass, said today, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at an international economic forum "New initiatives in the Year of Russia's chairmanship in the CIS.
Speaking about Russia's chairmanship in the CIS, he assured that Moscow has set "specific and realistic goals, which we believe will give us a clear direction for further action." In particular, he pointed to "increasing the efficiency of the economic component and related activities under the Year of Science and Innovation".
The Minister also expressed hope that "Russia's chairmanship will be marked not only the intense inter-state cooperation, and active contacts between people, institutions of civil society. "In the sphere of human relations will be the central event in Moscow next fall, the fifth forum of art and science of CIS countries, with the assistance of the Interstate Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation of CIS", - he informed.
Lavrov also said that Russia "attaches great importance to the signing by our leaders at the Chisinau summit of the Commonwealth last year a joint appeal to the peoples of the CIS countries and the world community in connection with the 65 th anniversary of Victory in Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." "We expect that the informal meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government in Moscow in May will be another confirmation of the generality of our approach and expect her to pay attention to supporting our veterans," - said the minister.
"Our goal - help to ensure that the outcome in 2010 the Commonwealth has become more attractive, and demand for each of its members", - summed up the head of Russia's diplomacy, assuring that "the Foreign Ministry of Russia will make efforts so that the CIS was filled with concrete content to the interests of its members" .
The head of Russia's Foreign Ministry also stated that Russia does not consider the space of the former Soviet Union as the "chessboard" for playing geopolitical games.
"Development of bilateral and multilateral cooperation with the States parties to the Commonwealth for Russia - an absolute priority, as set forth in the approved by President Dmitry Medvedev in July 2008, an updated concept of foreign policy" - recalled the minister. "In another way, and can not be, when it comes to relations with friendly countries and close to us, located on the perimeter of Russian borders", - he stressed.
This Lavrov pointed to "the absurdity of attempts to provide historically conditioned relations between states in the former Soviet Union in the light characteristic of the nineteenth century struggle for spheres of influence. "We do not see this space as a" chessboard "for playing geopolitical parties, - assured Minister. - It is common to all the people living there civilizational area, keeping our historic and spiritual heritage. " "Integration processes within the Commonwealth are" out of life, realize this enormous potential of joint responsibility for our common future ", - he added.
Simultaneously, Lavrov pointed out that "any geopolitical projects of external forces on our common space leading to destabilization, replacing pragmatism and common sense policy that takes into account the real national interests, all sorts of ideological enterprises. "Is it NATO expansion, and everything connected with it - not fight for" spheres of influence "? - Asked the minister. "Similar questions surround the project" Eastern Partnership "of the European Union, - he continued. - We hope that it will be transparent, take into account the realities of the region and not in conflict with the collective efforts of our countries to address the pressing problems of socio-economic development ".
According to Lavrov, "will not be transcendent require all external players to coordinate their policies in the CIS with a view to strengthening stability in it. "Some people will not be easy, since the need to abandon the ideological tenets and myths of the past, recognize the need for a more balanced approach to assessing the recent and more distant past, including through the prism of the global financial crisis, which in its significance is not inferior to the events at the turn of the 80's - 90-ies of the last century ", - said the minister.
Abc.az: Azerbaijan warns Russia about danger of CIS free trade agreement replacement
Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Within the framework of his first visit to Azerbaijan Igor Shuvalov, the Russian first vice president, probed the soil for renewal of the CIS Agreement on Free Trade Zone signed as far back as in 1994.
Governmental sources say that during negotiations the parties exchanged views on this issue initiated by Russia in 1999.
“Azerbaijan indicated Russia that replacement of the agreement can bring to loss of its members, although in 1994 it was signed by all 12 (by then moment) participating countries of the Commonwealth. In connection with such a risk, Azerbaijan sees almost no practical sense in cancellation of the 1994 agreement and protocol to it signed in 1999,” a source said.
A range of CIS countries already now refuse to implement provisions of the valid FTZ agreement.
“Azerbaijan reiterated clearly that it does not decline from cooperation within the CIS framework, including trade co-operation and moreover comes forward for its larger practical sense and quality,” the source said.
As a whole, Azerbaijan is satisfied with discussion with Shuvalov who is the Russian coordinator for CIS affairs.
Georgian Times: Burjanadze to meet DUMA speaker
Prominent member of Georgia’s opposition, Nino Burjanadze, who leads Democratic Movement-United Georgia, will wrap up her visit to Moscow after meeting with the speaker of the Russian DUMA, Boris Grizlov.
Within her visit to the Russian capital, Burjanadze, who went to opposition after defecting from Saakashvili`s team, has already met with the prime minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The two discussed the necessity of improving relations between Georgia and Russia and all other issues except the two breakaway regions of Georgia, which are occupied by Russia since the August war 2008.
At the meeting with, Putin said that Russia was prepared for negotiations with any political power, Georgian society and Georgian people.
Burjanadze in her turn agreed that normalizing relations with Russia was necessary for peaceful development of the region. She expressed her hope that the representatives of the two countries would find the ways for improving the situation by making specific steps.
Today, it was reported that after the meeting with Putin, the opposition party leader held meetings with the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov and the Deputy Minister Gregory Karasin.
Burjanadze spoke to Georgian journalists after the meeting with Putin and defined the goals of her visit to Moscow. She said her interests were beyond the interests of her political party.
`I came here to clarify with Russian leaders how it is possible to resume ties between the two countries,` Burjanadze said` I did not come here for the interests of my party, because there is no time for party business now,` ex-speaker announced and added that she was not going to make any agreements with Russia`s ruling party.
`I will travel to the East, West and South too, if this is vital for the interests of my country,` Burjanadze said.
Ex-speaker also denied the reports about defection of two key members of his party. She said it was an attempt of the government to overshadow the significance of her visit to Moscow.
`The political council of the party was assembled in the head office yesterday watching my visit to Moscow, including those two members, who, as TVs alleged, left the party,` Burjanadze said.
Rustavi2 2010.03.05 13:09
|The Financial: Burjanadze on Talks with Putin |
| |
|05/03/2010 10:49 (00:13 minutes ago) |
|Civil.Ge -- Nino Burjanadze, ex-parliamentary speaker and leader of Democratic Movement-United Georgia party, said she had |
|decided to meet with Russia's PM Vladimir Putin, to find out how MOSCOW views future relations with Georgia. |
She said that it was of special importance for Georgia "to know what are the prospects for Georgia-Russian relations."
After meeting with Putin on March 4, Burjanadze told Tbilisi -based Maestro television station by telephone from MOSCOW , that there was a possibility to start talks with Russia on resolving problems in bilateral relations, "if there is a desire in Georgia to give relations business-like nature, instead of current hysteria,"
"Although it is very difficult and it requires years," she said.
She said that during the meeting "a readiness" had been expressed from the Russian side "to have a dialogue and to try to find a solution to any issue, which is a source of concern for the Georgian people."
"It is irresponsible to say - as our government says - that we won't have talks with Russia unless it withdraws troops from the Georgian territories. If there are no talks, if there is no, at least, minimal mutual trust, the Russian troops will never withdraw from those territories," Burjanadze said.
She said that the Georgian authorities had done nothing in this direction and instead resorted to "military rhetoric, claiming that it has done everything right and that everything is Russia's fault."
"One party can never be totally right and another totally wrong - and Tagliavini report has also confirmed it... The mistakes have been made by the both sides," Burjanadze said.
"I participated in this meeting not to talk about the past, but to try to find solution for the future. It's up to historians to talk about the past," she said.
Asked who was an initiator to hold this meeting with Russia's PM, Burjanadze did not give an explicit answer, only saying that it was "a mutual desire."
"It is natural that the Russian authorities have a desire to talk with the Georgian representatives," she said.
Burjanadze said that after visiting MOSCOW she would visit Brussels and then travel to the United States. Burjanadze said that she also planned to visit neighboring countries.
She said that unlike ex-PM Zurab Nogaideli's Movement for Fair Georgia, her party had no plans to sign any cooperation treaty with Russia's ruling party, United Russia.
"Relations between the political parties can be planned only after Russo-Georgian relations become normal. Now it is not time for inter-party relationships. I arrived here to find out about major directions of the Russian policy," she added.
RIA: Russian humanitarian aid arrives in quake-hit Chile
04:2605/03/2010
Russian rescue workers and Chilean troops have unloaded the first plane with humanitarian aid to Chile which has been devastated by a series of earthquakes.
A Russian emergencies ministry's Il-76 cargo plane arrived late on Thursday to the Chilean capital, Santiago, carrying some 28 tons of tents, diesel generators, pumps, blankets and food.
Chile's Defense Minister Francisco Vidal Salinas, other senior government officials, and diplomats from the Russian embassy met the plane at the international airport in Santiago.
The Chilean officials have expressed gratitude to Russia for providing the country with timely aid.
A second Russian emergencies ministry's plane with more humanitarian cargo to Chile is expected to leave on Friday from an airport in the Moscow Region.
A devastating earthquake measuring 8.8 on the Richter scale struck near the coast of Chile on February 27, killing at least 800 people, according to official reports.
The quake was followed by a series of aftershocks and tsunamis leaving some 2 million Chileans homeless and damaging about 1.5 million houses.
Chile has declared three days of national mourning from midnight on Sunday in honor of the victims of the quake.
MOSCOW, March 5 (RIA Novosti)
RIA: Russia completes rotation of peacekeepers in Chad
00:3605/03/2010
Russia has sent the second group of service personnel from Russia's aviation group to Chad as part of a UN operation in the region, an Air Force spokesman said.
Russia's contribution to the UN mission in Central African Republic and Chad totals 118 peacekeepers and four Mi-8MT helicopters. The first part of the group departed from the Chkalovsky airfield near Moscow on Monday.
"The second part of the group left for Chad from the Migalovo airfield near Tver at 23:00 [8:00 p.m. GMT] on Thursday as part of a regular rotation. An Il-76 military transport plane will deliver 40 servicemen and about 50 metric tons of cargo to the deployment site of the Russian air group," Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik said.
The new group of Russian peacekeepers will spend eight months in Chad. Their tasks include transport of UN cargo and personnel, evacuations, search and rescue missions, and observation flights.
The UN Security Council has repeatedly voiced its concerns over the activity of armed groups in Chad and the Central African Republic, as well as in the neighboring Sudanese region of Darfur.
The Council approved on 25 September, 2007 the establishment in Chad and the Central African Republic "of a multidimensional presence intended to help create the security conditions conducive to a voluntary, secure and sustainable return of refugees and displaced persons".
Russian peacekeepers have been serving in Chad since November 2008.
MOSCOW, March 5 (RIA Novosti)
Khaleej Times: Dubai Police Chief Denies Russian Criminal Escaped
Amira Agarib
5 March 2010
DUBAI — Lt Major General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Commander-in-Chief of the Dubai Police has denied the news published by Russian News Agency saying that Russian criminal boss, Vladimir Vagin, 44, wanted for murder and awaiting extradition to Russia had escaped from Dubai prison.
Vagin is wanted internationally because there is evidence that on March 15, 2009, he stabbed a police officer in Russia, who was off-duty, in the chest.
According to the Russian News Agency, Vagin was detained on February 2 after the flight TG-0517, headed from Bangkok to Dubai, landed here. He was put in a pre-trial detention facility from which he successfully escaped. The agency said on its website that a so-called ‘thief in law’ Vagin is accused of murdering an off-duty officer in russia, and is therefore wanted. His escape from a detention facility in Dubai has therefore become a low blow for the Russian judicial system, and for Dubai Police as well, which hopes to find the fugitive. Lt Major Tamim said that Vagin drew suspicion from a Dubai Airport official while entering, for carrying a toy that looked like gun. But, when it was found that no crimes were recorded against him, he was released.
Lt.Major Tamim denied the Russian News Agency report which said that a local law firm had prepared false medical evidence according to which Vagin could not be kept in custody because of having “recently undergone major abdominal surgery”.
Russian law enforcement agents and Interpol officials are in Dubai to investigate the incident.
March 05, 2010 12:32
Interfax: Passport in name of militant leader found after armed clash in Ingushetia
ROSTOV-ON-DON. March 5 (Interfax) - A heavily burnt corpse and a passport in the name of Ulan Ude resident Alexander Tikhomirov, a notorious North Caucasus military leader, who is also known as Said Buryatsky, have been found at the site of a recent gun battle in Ingushetia's Ekazhevo village.
"The information available to us suggests that the passport could belong to the killed militant. According to the data in the passport, he was registered in Ulan Ude. As we know, this citizen converted to Islam and became an ardent follower of Wahhabism. He stood behind a large number of terrorist crimes targeting federal forces," a spokesman for the provisional group of forces in the North Caucasus told Interfax.
However, a series of tests, including DNA tests, will have to be conducted to confirm whether or not the body found in Ekazhevo belonged to Said Buryatsky, the spokesman said.
Nearly a dozen small arms, including three Kedr submachine guns, two Stechkin automatic pistols, a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a large amount of ammunition were confiscated from the scene, he said.
tm mj
Itar-Tass: Death of warlord Buryatsky to be officially confirmed by genetic study
05.03.2010, 10.21
MOSCOW, March 5 (Itar-Tass) -- The death of warlord Saeed Buryatsky /original name Alexander Tikhomirov/, a spiritual leader an inspirer of Russia’s North Caucasian militants, will be officially confirmed “only after a number of forensic studies, including molecular-genetic ones,” a top-ranking official from Russia’s law enforcement bodies told Itar-Tass on Friday.
According to the official, such identification procedures “take time and so far we cannot be sure that it was Buryatsky who was killed in Ingushetia on March 3.” The body of a militant, whose head was severely damaged, practically absent, was found near the town of Ekazhevo in Ingushetia’s Nazran district, where a special anti-terrorist operation was held. Two passports, Russian and international, were found on the body, both issued for Alexander Tikhomirov and featuring his photos, the official said.
“It is these two passports that serve as a basis to back the hypothetical elimination of Buryatsky,” the official noted, adding that identification procedures “might take several weeks, even several months.” He also reminded that Buryatsky had been reported to feign his death several times.
Buryatsky was reported to be killed on Tuesday in the course of a special operation in Ingushetia, an Interior source told Itar-Tass citing results of forensic studies performed in the city of Rostov-on-Don.
The source said the special operation resulted in the elimination of six militants and detention of another sixteen. A total of five of them were active-duty officers of the Ingushetian police. The operation was held near the town of Ekazhevo in the Nazran district. The forces of law and order proposed to the militants to surrender but they opened fire in return.
Sheik Saeed Buryatsky, whose name is specified as Alexander Tikhomirov in his domestic Russian passport, was born in the East-Siberian city of Ulan Ude. He had a mother of the Buryat nationality and a Russian father.
He came to notoriety across the CIS as an Islamic preacher and an ideologist of North Caucasus armed clandestine groupings.
Tikhomirov converted to Islam under the influence of ethnic Ingush friends at the age of fifteen and adopted the Islamic name Saeed.
From 2002 through 2005, he studied in madrasahs in Egypt and Yemen.
At the beginning of 2008, Saeed joined the milieu of North Caucasus paramilitaries. He covertly met with the leader of Chechen militants, Doku Umarov, after which he took part in subversive operations and militants’ sorties.
Chechnya’s President Ramzan Kadyrov called Tikhomirov “the chief ideologists of paramilitary gangsters” and accused him of training the suicide bomber Rustam Mukhadiyev, who set off a bomb on Teatralny Square in Grozny on July 26, 2009.
Investigators in the Chechen Republic instituted a criminal case against Tikhomirov on July 30, 2009.
Reports appeared at the end of last August that a Gazel truck stuffed with explosives, which broke through the gate of Nazran central police department last August, was driven by Saeed personally. The terrorist attack killed 25 policemen and left another 260 wounded. Assessments put the power of the explosive into the bracket of 400 kilograms to 1,000 kilograms. The building of the police office was fully destroyed.
Two days later, Saeed personally came up with a denial. He said the truck had been driven by some other militant.
RIA: Notorious gang leader reportedly killed in Russia's North Caucasus
23:3504/03/2010
A notorious gang leader in Russia's North Caucasus known as Alexander Tikhomirov or Said Buryatsky has been killed in a special operation, law enforcement sources said Thursday.
RIA Novosti has not yet received official confirmation of Tikhomirov's death, but the sources said he was killed on Tuesday and identified on Thursday.
Investigators say Tikhomirov was one of the key ideologists among the militant groups in Russia's volatile south. They also say he organized a number of large-scale terrorist attacks.
Police said Tuesday that at least six suspected militants were killed during a police sweep in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia.
Fierce fighting had erupted earlier in the day near the region's largest city, Nazran, when a group of heavily armed militants were holed up in several houses and refused to surrender.
According to police, the militants had been involved in recent attacks on law enforcement officials, and planted bombs near police headquarters in Ingushetia.
Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus republics, especially Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, have seen an upsurge of militant violence lately, with frequent attacks on police and officials.
The Kremlin has pledged to wage "a ruthless fight" against militant groups but also acknowledged a need to tackle unemployment, organized crime, clan rivalry and corruption as causes of the ongoing violence in the region.
Moscow announced an end to its decade-long antiterrorism campaign against separatists in Chechnya in April 2009, but has since had to step up the fight against militants as skirmishes and attacks on police and other officials have continued.
MOSCOW, March 4 (RIA Novosti)
Russia Today: Russian mujahidin mastermind eliminated in North Caucasus
05 March, 2010, 00:09
Perhaps the most wanted militant leader, Aleksandr Tikhomirov, known as Said Buryatsky, has been eliminated in a special operation in the Russian Republic of Ingushetia on Tuesday.
The development was officially confirmed by a forensic medical examination made in the city Rostov-on-Don.
Six other militants were killed during the operation and fifteen suspects were detained. Five of the detained turned out to be Ingush law enforcement.
The operation was conducted on March 2 in the Nazran district of Ingushetia near the village of Ekazhevo. Militants had blockaded themselves in several houses in the village and at an abandoned farm. After their surrender was demanded they opened fire and all six of them were eliminated.
Four law enforcement officers were wounded.
Besides arms and ammunition, the special forces confiscated about 450 kilograms of ammonium nitrate used for making homemade explosive devices.
Later on one of the bodies was identified as belonging to Said Buryatsky.
Investigators said the leading militant in southern Russia masterminded many terrorist attacks, including an assassination attempt on the President of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and an explosion in November 2009 on the Nevsky Express train that killed 27.
Chechen president Ramzad Kadyrov named Aleksandr Tikhomirov “the main ideologue terror chief” and accused him of coaching a suicide bomber that attempted to assassinate the president of Chechnya on July, 26, 2009.
Tikhomirov was also thought to have been a suicide bomber himself on August 17, 2009, when a small truck loaded with allegedly 400-1000 kilograms of explosives broke into the territory of the Nazran police department and exploded there, killing 25 and wounding 250 police officers.
Two days later, though, Said Buryatsky personally refuted the news, saying it was not him, which means he had sent another militant to die instead of him in the Jihad he preached.
Aleksandr Tikhomirov
Said Abu Saad al-Buryati (Aleksandr Tikhomirov aka Said Buryatsky)
Born in 1982 in Russian Republic of Buryatia
Father: Buryat, Mother: Russian
1997 – turned to Islam
2002-2005 – Studied Sunni Islam in Madrassas in Egypt, Yemen and Russia
2008 – Joined militants in Ingushetia, subordinate to warlord Doku Umarov. Personally participated in organizing several terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus and Russia.
Itar-Tass: Warlord Saeed Buryatsky eliminated in North Caucasus
04.03.2010, 23.36
NAZRAN, March4 (Itar-Tass) – Warlord Saeed Buryatsky /original name Alexander Tikhomirov/, a spiritual leader an inspirer of Russia’s North Caucasian militants was eliminated Tuesday in the course of a special operation in the region of Ingushetia, an Interior source told Itar-Tass citing results of forensic studies.
The latter were performed in the city of Rostov-on-Don.
The source said the special operation resulted in the elimination of six militants and detention of another sixteen.
A total of five of them were active-duty officers of the Ingushetian police.
The operation was held near the town of Ekazhevo in the Nazran district.
The forces of law and order proposed to the militants to surrender but they opened fire in return.
Reuters: RPT-ANALYSIS-Global jihad creeping into Russia's insurgency
Fri Mar 5, 2010 12:30pm IST
* Russian insurgency has links to Muslim world
* Patronage, funding inching in from abroad
By Amie Ferris-Rotman
MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - The Islamist insurgency in Russia's North Caucasus region appears to be mutating from a grassroots separatist movement towards global jihad or holy war, whose goals, propaganda and patronage point abroad.
In February Russia's most wanted guerrilla, Chechen-born Doku Umarov, vowed on Islamist websites to spread his attacks from the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus into the nation's heartland, wreaking havoc through jihad.
His pledge follows escalating violence in the form of shootings and suicide bombs targeting authorities over the last year in the mountainous North Caucasus -- particularly Chechnya, site of two separatist wars since the mid-1990s, and the provinces flanking it, Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Regional Muslim leaders and rebels revile each other as blasphemous and criminal. But after years of the Soviet Union suppressing religion, both welcome a Muslim revival that has brought elaborate new mosques, government-sponsored hajj trips to Mecca and a bubbling interest in Arabic.
Alexander Cherkasov, who has closely followed the North Caucasus for 15 years for rights group Memorial, said whereas in the past rebels wanted freedom from Russia, a struggle that dates back over 200 years, now they are influenced by jihadism, a global fight against alleged enemies of Islam.
"Part of it is homegrown. Corruption leads many to seek out what they call true Islam, but political Islam, by way of foreign financing and insurgents, is certainly playing a role," he told Reuters.
AL QAEDA LINKS?
In early February, Russia said its forces had killed the al Qaeda operative and Egyptian militant Makhmoud Mokhammed Shaaban in Dagestan, who the FSB security service said had masterminded several bombings.
A myriad of web sites that have come to characterise the insurgency show videos of "martyrs", something unheard of in the region five years ago. They feature mostly local men, framed by Caucasus flags, chanting in Arabic ahead of suicide missions.
Over the last year, public statements of support for Doku Umarov and other Caucasus rebel leaders have come from a leading al Qaeda mentor, Jordanian Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi.
U.S. intelligence officials say Maqdisi is a major jihadi mentor who wields more influence over Islamist ideology than leading militants such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
In an open letter to Umarov last year, which was posted on unofficial Islamist websites, Maqdisi said "it is my great pleasure to express my alignment with, patronage for, and support to the Mujahideen of the Caucasus."
Rebel leader Alexander Tikhomirov, an accomplished cleric who renamed himself Said Buryatsky after his native East Siberian Buryatia region, trained for jihad in Egypt for many years, where he learned fluent Arabic, political analysts say.
Buryatsky took responsibility for the deadliest attack in the North Caucasus in four years last August when a suicide bomber killed at least 20 and injured 138 at a police headquarters in Ingushetia.
Christopher Langton of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London told Reuters that "jihadism" in the North Caucasus is "energised" partly by links to Afghanistan and the Middle East composed of a mixture of smuggling, trade, Islamic non-governmental organisations and charities.
The FSB, successor to the KGB, has long said the insurgency has links to al Qaeda although regional leaders reject that.
"We have identified enormous financial influence from Afghanistan and Pakistan," said Sergei Goncharov, head of a group of veterans of an elite KGB force.
ISOLATION TACTIC
But Kremlin critics say the government blames al Qaeda to cover up its share of responsibility for the region's poverty and endemic corruption, which also inspires youths to turn to extremism.
"Moscow wants to conceptualise the North Caucasus, they are interested in isolating it from the rest of Russia," Glen Howard, President of the Washington-based think tank Jamestown Foundation, told Reuters.
Regional leaders often play down the insurgency as a whole.
Moscow-backed hardline Chechen boss Ramzan Kadyrov says there are fewer than 30 insurgents left in his republic. He has also accused the West of financing the Islamist insurgency, as well as plotting to seize the entire Caucasus region.
Ingushetia's leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov maintains that deep poverty alone fuels discontent.
Over the last two years, deaths due to violent incidents have shot up dramatically in the North Caucasus, from just over 40 in January 2008 to 140 in August 2009, according to a study by Washington's Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
There is now alarm that Islamist extremism could spread to other parts of Russia, home to around 20 million Muslims, more than half of whom live outside the North Caucasus.
Paul Quinn-Judge, from the International Crisis Group, warned that the violence could indeed spread: "The guerrillas are trying to extend the war to Russia proper."
Today’s Zaman: [EXPAT PROFILE] So much more to Dagestan than meets the eye
I first realized that Dagestan is a real place -- not just a colored area on a map -- while talking to a Dagestani simit seller when I first came to Turkey eight years ago.
My Turkish wasn’t good enough to ask him many questions, so I was delighted to discover that Asya, the daughter-in-law of the owner of my favorite restaurant, is Dagestani. Of course, I’m not the only person curious about Dagestan, and Asya tells us what people generally want to find out.
The short geography lesson
So do people know where Dagestan is? “Many people from the Caucasus have settled in Turkey, so Turks generally have an idea of where I’m talking about,” she explains. However, she often has to give non-Turks a short geography lesson. “It’s in the north part of the Caucasus, across from Kazakhstan on the western shores of the Caspian,” she begins, adding that “it borders Azerbaijan in the south and Georgia in the west. There are also borders with other parts of the Russian Federation: the Chechen Republic in the west, Stavropol Territory in the northwest and the Republic of Kalmykia in the north.”
Turkish speakers realize that Dagestan -- “dağ,” a Turkic word for “mountain” and “stan,” the Persian word for “land of” -- is very mountainous. “The south is like that, but about a third of the country -- in the north -- is flat steppe land,” she highlights, adding that “it’s not a very big country and covers just 400 kilometers by 200 kilometers; Turkey is about 15 times bigger. It’s hot and dry in the summer and winters are hard in the mountains.”
“There’s no easily accessible pass over the Caucasus so the 40-kilometer-long coastal plain is an important north-south passage,” she goes on, adding that “this means that Dagestan is well-connected to other places in the region: There are trains from the capital to Moscow and Astrakhan as well as to Azerbaijan. The Moscow-Baku Highway passes through Dagestan, and there are also international flights to places like Turkey and Italy.”
“I’m from the capital, Makhachkala, which is home to around 600,000 people,” she says, adding that “it’s twinned with Yalova here in Turkey as well as cities in the US, Russia and China.”
‘Who are the Kumyks?’
Asya is often asked what nationality she is. She’s both Russian and Dagestani (as well as Turkish). But she’s also a Kumyk. Asya tells us about the Kumyks, a people whose history runs parallel to the general history of one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world.
“The region’s strategic importance means that over the centuries each group, including us, has been directly or indirectly affected by outside powers,” she explains, adding that “the Romans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Seljuks, Ottomans and Russians have all tried to control the area. “
“It’s thought that we were originally a mix of tribes already in the Caucasus and nomad Turkic-speaking tribes who moved there from the fourth to 12th centuries,” she says, adding that “we’ve traditionally occupied part of northern Dagestan, part of the south and lands bordering the Caspian. From the 11th to 13th centuries, we came under different kingdoms. From the 15th century to 1867, the Kumyks in the central plains had an independent kingdom, the Shamkhalat of Tarki, with protection from the Selcuks, Persians and Russians at different times. In the 17th and 18th centuries we ended up caught in the middle of wars between the Muslim Persians and Christian Russians. Then in 1867 Russia occupied the North Caucasus, and the Shamkhalat was divided into two Russian provinces. The region became part of the ex-Soviet Union in 1920 when the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created. Then during World War II part of our homeland was briefly invaded by the Nazis, who wanted control of the region’s oilfields. Despite their promises, we didn’t collaborate with them. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, we’ve been part of the Dagestan Autonomous Republic, a member of the Russia Federation.”
Unusual to pay rent in Dagestan
Many people are also very curious about the cost of living in Dagestan, and they generally think that people have a hard time there. “That’s not the case,” Asya explains.
So what’s an average monthly wage? “State workers earn $400-$500, and people in the private sector earn around $700,” she explains, adding that “bills are much lower than in Turkey as we don’t have to import natural gas or oil; utility bills total around $80 a month. Food costs about the same as in Turkey, but the majority of people -- no matter they live -- have an allotment where they grow their own vegetables and may even keep a few animals. The major difference with Turkey is that everybody in Dagestan, except for foreign students, is a homeowner, so they don’t pay rent.”
Dagestan receives funding from the central Russian government for public services such as the police force, education and healthcare. “All Dagestanis are entitled to free healthcare whether they’re employed or not, and education is free. I was a law student before I came to live here, and all university students get a grant of about TL 120 a month to cover travel costs and food in university canteens. Books are also free.”
Do people in Dagestan like visitors? Asya’s answer is an enthusiastic “yes,” but despite being home to a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site, Derbent, why is there little tourism there at the moment?
“Like many other ex-Soviet territories, Dagestan is dealing with the repercussions of our complex history, such as decisions made by [Joseph] Stalin over 60 years ago and others made during Soviet rule,” she highlights, adding that “during World War II Stalin accused the Chechens of aiding the Nazis and deported them to Central Asia en masse and gave Dagestan and Ossetia part of their territory. Later whole ethnic groups were resettled within Dagestan, such as the Avar, who were sent to live in the north where the Kumyk were.”
‘The mountains of languages’
So was it difficult for Asya to learn Turkish? “Not really,” she replies, “but when I first came in 2000 I didn’t want to because I didn’t think I’d settle here. That all changed after I got married, of course. I’ve learned it by watching TV and reading the newspaper.”
Is Asya’s mother tongue, Kumyk, very different to Turkish?
“Not really. Kumyk is a Turkic language, very similar to Azerbaijani Turkish,” she highlights, adding that “when Turkic-speaking tribes migrated into the Dagestan area there was an intermingling of languages and modern Kumyk includes some Bulgar, Khazar and Oghuz Turk. Over the past century, it’s also been influenced by both Azeri and Russian. Kumyk was written using Arabic script until 1928 and with Latin script to 1938. Now we use Cyrillic script. There’s a strong Kumyk literary tradition, and the Quran has also been translated into Kumyk.”
“It’s spoken by about 365,000 of the 3 million people in Dagestan,” she continues, adding that “the Arabs called the region ‘the mountains of languages,’ and it still is. There are 10 main groups of people in Dagestan such as the Caucasian Avars, Dargins and Lezgins who have their own languages and the Turkic peoples such as the Kumyk and the Nogais (who alone speak two different languages). There are also smaller populations, such as the Hinukh, who have their own distinct languages with their own languages, as well as Russians, Azeris and Chechens who live in Dagestan.”
So how do people communicate with each other? “Everybody speaks their own languages at home and Russian outside,” she explains, adding: “Until the 1917 revolution Arabic was the lingua franca, followed by Azeri Turkish in some areas until World War II and Kumyk in others. Education is in Russian, of course, but we can also choose to take extra lessons in our own languages, such as Kumyk.”
So what is she teaching her 18-month-old son? “I’ve started with Russian and Turkish, but I’d also like him to learn English,” she replies, adding that “I’ll also teach him Kumyk later.”
Do you miss Dagestan?
“Turkish and Dagestani cultures are very similar” is the answer Asya gives when asked if she feels homesick. So what are the similarities? “Well, firstly, religion,” she replies, adding that “around 90 percent of Dagestanis are Sunni Muslim and the rest mostly Christian. Until 1991 there were also some Mountain Jews, but they’ve mostly emigrated. Despite the Soviets closing all the mosques Islam survived in Dagestan and religious occasions such as circumcision, wakes and bayrams are all very important parts of our lives.”
Food is important to Asya in more ways than one: She met her husband, Yakup, while having a meal at Annem Zeynep’un Mutfağı when she came to Antalya on vacation in 2005. So what does she make of Turkish food? “Like the Turks, traditional food is very important to us. There’s only one McDonald’s in Dagestan,” she highlights, adding: “Unlike the Turks, we don’t feel the need to have rice with every meal, and we eat much more meat! Some food is similar, such as ‘dolma’ and sausage, but we also eat many dumplings. A favorite Kumyk dish is ‘hinkal,’ dumplings boiled in meat stock and served with sour cream gravy and garlic.”
So does she miss her family and country? “Of course, families and communities are very close knit in Dagestan, more so than in Turkey even,” she highlights. “My family is happy for me but also sad because I’m so far away. We see each other once a year. Either they come here or we go there. We also phone each other three or four times a week. As for Dagestan, there are both good and bad things about it, but at the end of the day it’s my country.”
The Moscow Times: Kremlin Tightens Grip on Election Watchdog
05 March 2010
President Dmitry Medvedev has installed a Kremlin insider as deputy head of the Central Election Commission, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Thursday, citing an unidentified official close to the agency.
The commission created the new position Wednesday for Mikhail Berulava, a Kremlin aide responsible for relations with the State Duma, the newspaper said. Berulava declined to comment on his appointment, it said.
Berulava’s job will be to organize the formation of local electoral committees in advance of Duma elections in 2011 and the presidential vote in 2012, the report said. The terms of most committees expire this year.
Berulava holds a doctorate in psychology and has worked in the Kremlin for more than nine years.
(Bloomberg)
VTB Capital: Russians react with scepticism to President Medvedev's initiatives to reform the Interior Ministry and modernise Russia
VTB Capital
March 5, 2010
only 26% believe the former will bring results - while the modernisation programme garners favour from just 11% of the population
News: Vedomosti has today published an article on the results of a social poll carried out by Levada-Center. People were asked what their attitude was to President Dmitry Medvedev's reform of the Interior Ministry and his programme to modernise the country. Both sets of answers reflected a strong negative bias.
On police reform, 66% of respondents said that they did not think there would be any positive results. In particular, 11% treated this as reflecting a power struggle while 28% thought the reform was a 'simulation'. Some 27% noted that it was not targeting the key problems. However, 26% of respondents believe that the President has indeed started a radical reform.
There was also scepticism concerning the modernisation programme: 16% believe it will be used to steal public money and 17% called it 'simply talk' while only 11% believe modernisation will lead to the creation of a state based on law with free market economy.
Our View: There are good grounds for this scepticism as in recent years reforms have mostly stagnated and Russians still remember that reforms might mean changes and instability. Moreover, most respondents mentioned Medvedev's low political independence as one of the key reasons why they did not believe in the reforms he has initiated. In this respect, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent decision to support the modernisation programme might increase the popularity of this initiative. In our view, were the reforms to be implemented successfully, that would be positive for the popularity of the President.
The St. Petersburg Times: Medvedev Offers Sweeping Reforms of Criminal Code
By Vera Kholmogorova and Alexei Nikolsky
Vedomosti
MOSCOW —President Dmitry Medvedev has decided to remove the article on false entrepreneurship from the Criminal Code, reduce prison terms for money laundering and increase the threshold for economic crimes to be treated as “major” and “massive,” Vedomosti has learned.
The president submitted a host of changes to the Criminal and Criminal Procedural codes to the State Duma on Monday that would liberalize how economic crimes are punished.
Medvedev was carrying through on promises he made during a meeting Saturday with business representatives, which was also attended by Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika.
The bill, a copy of which was obtained by Vedomosti, would remove Article 173 on false entrepreneurship from the Criminal Code, as well as removing violations of licensing terms and conditions from Article 171 on illegal entrepreneurship and Article 172 on illegal banking activity. The formulation was too vague and led to broad interpretations, according to explanatory notes accompanying the legislation.
Money laundering, covered under Article 174, Point 1, would now require the presence of a defining characteristic: The action must “give the appearance of legality to the ownership, use or distribution of the indicated funds.” The change was needed to prevent someone charged, for example, with false entrepreneurship, from also facing laundering charges for making any purchase with the funds in question.
The punishment for money laundering would be reduced to between three and 10 years, from the current five to 15. Medvedev’s bill also proposes increasing the levels of funds involved in economic crimes when determining whether an offense is “major” or “massive.”
The bars would be raised six-fold to 1.5 million rubles ($50,000) for major offenses and 6 million rubles ($200,000) for the most serious economic crimes.
The liberalization of the money-laundering law will change how arrests are made, said lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov. Currently, suspects can be locked up while on trial for “serious” and “severe” crimes — carrying maximum sentences of five to 10 years and 10 years or more, respectively. The money-laundering charge is often tacked on to other crimes to make them more serious, he said.
Previously, the law had never included a clear definition of what constitutes money laundering, meaning that investigators were free to interpret it however they wanted. The president’s proposals will help reduce the number of arrests, Zherebenkov said.
The bill would also establish minimum bail sizes. Suspects in minor and serious crimes would need to post at least 100,000 rubles, while suspects in severe crimes would be required to offer at least 500,000 rubles. Physical property, stocks and bonds will also be allowed to serve as bail.
Financial Times: Moscow destroyed Yukos, judges told
By Catherine Belton in Moscow
Published: March 4 2010 23:33 | Last updated: March 4 2010 23:33
Former executives from Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s bankrupted Yukos went head to head with the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights on Thursday in a “watershed” hearing over a $98bn claim that Moscow unlawfully destroyed the oil company.
The hearing marked a milestone in the plaintiffs’ six-year attempt to seek restitution for the state’s takeover of Yukos. They say shareholders’ rights were violated in a legal campaign that amounted to “disguised expropriation”.
Yukos, once Russia’s biggest oil producer, was brought to its knees by more than $33bn (€24bn, £22bn) in back tax claims and then taken over by the state in a series of bankruptcy auctions, following the politically charged arrest of its main owner, Mr Khodorkovsky, in 2003.
The Strasbourg hearing was the only time the two sides had met in front of Europe’s top rights court to argue their case after more than five years of providing written submissions to the panel of judges. A verdict is expected later this year.
“It is now entirely in the hands of the court. There will be no further pleadings,” said Piers Gardner, lawyer for the plaintiffs, who are led by Steven Theede, Yukos’s former chief executive, and Bruce Misamore, its former chief financial officer. Thursday’s hearing “ultimately represented the final watershed – the last word”.
The plaintiffs say any damages awarded will be distributed to Yukos’s former shareholders.
The case could rest on whether the plaintiffs can convince the judges that the Russian government’s case against Yukos was not in the public interest. Other property cases under the European Convention on Human Rights have failed because states can take advantage of a get-out clause allowing them to breach rights if they are deemed to be acting in a widely defined public interest.
Lawyers for the Russian government argued that Yukos had committed extensive tax fraud, while numerous trials in Russia had shown the company had illegally hidden profits and defrauded the state.
Yukos contends that the charges were part of a politically motivated campaign driven by the former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin’s bid to consolidate political and economic power, while shareholders and the company had been denied the right to a fair hearing in Russian courts.
“Yukos’s contention is that it fulfilled its responsibilities and paid its taxes as any other taxpayer would throughout the years 2000-04 and that, at the very end of 2003, frankly out of a virtually blue sky, everything changed,” said Mr Gardner. “Yukos argued this was exceptional treatment . . . a grossly unfair burden on Yukos. This is the balance the court now has to resolve.”
Mr Misamore said: “The question is whether it is ever in the public interest to expropriate a company for pure political motivation.
“In Russia, there is a broader public issue that the expropriation has had a severe negative effect on . . . the willingness of companies to invest their money in Russia that was manifested in the severe economic downturn.”
Mr Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion and is currently on trial in Moscow for a second set of charges alleging that he embezzled oil from his own company and then laundered the proceeds.
|05 March 2010, Friday |
THERESA DAY ANTALYA
Bloomberg: Russia’s Gold Deficit Shows Us What’s Wrong: Celestine Bohlen
March 04, 2010, 6:20 PM EST
Commentary by Celestine Bohlen
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Russia is in a funk. Its performance at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver was its worst ever, and its economy suffered more last year than any other nation in the Group of 20.
This is no coincidence, as the old Communist newspaper Pravda used to say. These failures are linked, and they have to do with a political system that has sucked the air out of the country. State companies control much of the economy, a single party rules the airwaves, and an overbearing, corrupt bureaucracy twists laws and stifles initiative.
None of this is good for business and, as it turns out, it isn’t good for sport. If Russia wants to go for gold it will have to shed a system that operates from the top down.
That approach worked, at enormous human cost, under Soviet communism, which succeeded in rapidly industrializing a backward economy and in churning out top athletes like widgets. But it’s all wrong for the 21st century.
Yet for some reason, Russia’s leaders are still stuck in the past. The reaction to the dismal showing at the Olympics was typical: President Dmitry Medvedev has called for the heads of the country’s top sports officials -- as if a purge would make any difference to the performance of Russian hockey stars.
There is no doubt that Russia’s sports bureaucrats have a lot to answer for. But their grotesquely bloated expense accounts aren’t the sole cause of shortcomings in a national sports system that has been neglected for 20 years.
No Engine
Another sample of retrograde thinking is written all over Russia’s plan to create its own Silicon Valley, a project headed by Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s top strategist. As he made clear in a Feb. 15 interview, Surkov finds the best way to generate innovation and spur the modernization of Russia’s lagging economy -- which he compares to an old armored railroad car without an engine -- is to deploy “consolidated power,” or if you will, “authoritarian modernization.”
Talk about a contradiction in terms. You don’t have to be a die-hard free-market capitalist to doubt whether “authoritarian modernization” will produce the creative talent and risk-taking entrepreneurship that led to the boom in Silicon Valley.
Russia has reason to worry about its competitiveness, as a sports power and as an economy. Surkov said as much when he called the country a “vacuum” caught between Asia, Europe and the U.S. “If we are not able to increase incomes, people will start to be listless and disillusioned,” he said.
Alarm Bell
This kind of disillusion has already set in and it is sapping Russia’s performance -- on the ice rink, on the slopes and in the real economy -- everywhere outside oil, gas and other areas dominated by government bureaucrats and their oligarch buddies.
Like many other Russians, Aleksei Pushkov, a television commentator, saw the country’s poor showing in Vancouver -- with only three gold medals -- as an alarm bell. “It is a signal that we are creating a country and a society devoid of motivation,” he said on Feb. 27.
For some, the news is that people like Surkov and Pushkov are now admitting that Russia is at a standstill, 10 years after Vladimir Putin, now prime minister, took office as president and started to build his famous “vertical power” structure.
“When something is declared broken, you can fix it,” said Esther Dyson, head of EDventure Holdings, which mentors technology companies, and one of three foreigners on Surkov’s innovation commission. “The opportunity here is that Surkov is declaring that something is broken.”
Avoiding Bribes
Dyson, a veteran of Russia’s turbulent capitalism, says the innovation team should focus on demands that come from society itself -- by, for instance, coming up with a handy electronic system that would help Russians pay traffic fines easily, and avoid having to shell out repeated bribes to greedy cops.
“It sounds trivial, but if you can change habits in daily life, it carries over,” she said. “It starts with the culture, and giving people the feeling that markets work and laws are enforced.”
That may sound like a modest goal, compared with Serco’s grandiose vision of a multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley emerging on some Russian steppe. But if Russia is to emerge as a winner, it has to start by giving people a system they can believe in.
--Editors: David Henry, James Greiff.
-0- Mar/04/2010 23:00 GMT
To contact the writer of this column: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at cbohlen1@
To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@
MARCH 4, 2010, 11:39 P.M. ET
WSJ: Russian Inventor Has Friends in Kremlin, but Skeptics Outside It
Viktor Petrik Says He Can Turn Radioactive Waste Into Drinking Water
By GREGORY L. WHITE
VSEVOLOZHSK, Russia—Viktor Petrik shows off what he describes as his discoveries: a cell that generates electricity when you breathe on it. A new way to produce silicon for computer chips from fertilizer waste. A filter that cleans the toxins—and the color—from red wine.
"This is real, serious science here," he says as he shows visitors around his modest labs and factory.
He has won some high-level support. United Russia, the ruling party, regularly gives him prominent roles in events on innovation, while officials including Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia's parliament and No. 2 in the party, have publicly endorsed his products. The two men are listed as the authors of a patent granted in 2009 for a filter that Mr. Petrik says can turn radioactive waste into water that's safe to drink.
But to some prominent Russian scientists, the 64-year-old Mr. Petrik is a charlatan. "He's a master of bluff," says Eduard Kruglyakov, a physicist who heads a special commission of Russia's Academy of Sciences set up to expose pseudoscience. He says he has spent months investigating Mr. Petrik's claims and has concluded that they are scientifically impossible in some cases, or borrowed largely from others. "He hasn't discovered anything." Others echo those concerns.
In recent weeks, the conflict has heated up, with critical articles about Mr. Petrik in the national press and Mr. Gryzlov denouncing the pseudoscience panel as "obscurantism."
Mr. Petrik's detractors say he's the latest in a long history of false experts who owe their success to their ability to fool people in power. Says Petrik critic Rostislav Polishchuk, a member of the pseudoscience commission: "Russia is especially vulnerable to this."
Mr. Petrik dismisses his academic detractors as small-minded and jealous. "I'm not restricted by the boundaries" of traditional scientific disciplines, he says, adding, "I'm an inventor, not a scientist." Most of his breakthroughs, he says, come to him while he is in a state of self-hypnosis.
Mr. Petrik's best-known products are his household water filters, which he says use nanotechnology—sheets of carbon the thickness of an atom—to deliver unique results. The filters won a 2007 competition sponsored by United Russia. Several party-controlled regional governments have installed them in schools, homes and hospitals.
"The water-filter systems he invented provide water of the highest quality, unattainable with other systems," United Russia's Mr. Gryzlov said at a party-sponsored conference a year ago, as Mr. Petrik sat with him on the dais.
Mr. Petrik says his filters have been tested in labs in Russia and Europe and found to be effective. Mr. Kruglyakov says he studied the contents of one of Mr. Petrik's filters with high-powered equipment and found no sign of nanotechnology. Mr. Petrik rejects that.
In 2007, a state-run nuclear agency in the Urals tested a different Petrik filter on radioactive waste but found it to be inadequate, according to agency officials. Mr. Petrik says the test wasn't conducted properly.
In February, United Russia presented to the government a national clean-water program that some officials have said could be worth as much as $500 billion over the next decade. Mr. Petrik says he plans to compete to have his filters included in the project.
United Russia referred questions about Mr. Petrik to Mr. Gryzlov, who declined though a spokesman to comment for this article. Mr. Petrik declined to comment on his relationship with the party chief.
At the government-sponsored St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2008, Mr. Gryzlov glowingly introduced Mr. Petrik as "a person who has a large quantity of inventions and patents."
According to an official transcript, Mr. Petrik responded in kind: "Boris Vyacheslavovich [Gryzlov] personally doesn't just observe, he participates in all the experiments," Mr. Petrik said, according to an official transcript.
A year ago, Mr. Gryzlov visited Mr. Petrik's labs with the head of Rusnano, the state nanotechnology company, according to Rusnano and Mr. Petrik. Seven months later, Rusnano approved 79 million rubles ($2.6 million) in venture funding for Mr. Petrik's project to extract the chemical element rhenium from scrap. Rusnano says the project met its strict technical standards.
Mr. Petrik says he learned hypnosis from his uncle. He got an undergraduate degree in psychology at Leningrad State University in 1976, according to university records.
He says he also studied physics but didn't get a degree. The university says it doesn't have detailed records of the courses he took.
He spent much of the 1980s in prison. Yevgeny Zubarev, a journalist who wrote frequently about Mr. Petrik in the 1990s, says he saw the criminal file and the central charge was smuggling antique furniture. Mr. Petrik acknowledges he was in prison but declined to comment on the charges.
After Mr. Petrik won early release in 1989, St. Petersburg officials asked him to make the rare metal isotope osmium-187 in his basement lab to sell for export, he says. But the plan fell apart when Russian customs agents stopped a shipment of samples bound for Germany for lack of export permits.
A top city official involved later told a local newspaper that he was initially skeptical of the scheme but was convinced after he met the "inventor." That official was Vladimir Putin, now Russia's prime minister.
Mr. Petrik won't comment on any contacts with Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin's office declined to comment.
Mr. Petrik says he has also met prominent people outside Russia and shows pictures to prove it. In December 2004, he visited former President George H.W. Bush in Texas and discussed his technology for cleaning groundwater. "When we met, Bush knew a lot about me already," he says, adding that he hopes to have another meeting with him in the next few months.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bush said the meeting was "a very short courtesy call" and that they haven't been in touch since and have no plans for further meetings.
In Russia, the controversy around Mr. Petrik has put the Academy of Sciences on the spot. Once one of the world's leading scientific institutions, the academy has struggled since the 1991 Soviet collapse with deep budget cuts and neglect by top officials.
At a session chaired by Mr. Gryzlov at a Moscow chemistry institute last spring, top academy scientists outlined funding and other problems they hoped he would help with.
Then, Mr. Petrik presented 11 of his discoveries, which the academics endorsed as being of "substantial scientific interest," according to an official record of the session.
Later, some of the same scientists visited Mr. Petrik's lab. Russian TV captured the scientists enthusing about what Mr. Petrik had shown them. One prominent chemist compared him to Thomas Edison.
Once the video became public, the leader of the delegation told a Russian news Web site the effusive praise for Mr. Petrik was "in joking form." He declined to comment for this article.
Under pressure from critics who claimed the academy was hurting its reputation by kowtowing to powerful politicians, the academy in February ordered an inquiry into the science behind 11 of Mr. Petrik's inventions.
He says he's confident he'll be vindicated. In his lab, he shows a board with the United Russia logo and panes of glass treated with another of his inventions, a compound that he says generates electricity from light. A small red light shines from the panel. "It will glow for 1,000 years," he said.
Write to Gregory L. White at greg.white@
RIA: Yellow snow falls in Russia's Far East
08:2505/03/2010
The Amur region in Russia's Far East was hit by yellow snow, Elena Pechkina, a regional meteorologist, told RIA Novosti on Friday.
High winds in Mongolia mixed the clouds from a front with dust and sand, crossed northern China, and then dumped the unique-colored snow in Russia.
"This type of precipitation is not harmful to the residents of the area and no additional analyses will be done," Pechkina said.
She said this type of snow was not rare, however usually falls in the region at the end of March or early April.
VLADIVOSTOK, March 5 (RIA Novosti)
Discover Magazine: Globe-Warning Methane Is Gushing From a Russian Ice Shelf
Behind the ongoing back-and-forth fights over climate change that usually focus on carbon, there has lingered the threat of the powerful greenhouse gas methane being released into the atmosphere and causing even worse trouble. In August we reported on a study that noted methane bubbling up from the seafloor near islands north of Norway, giving scientists a scare. This week in Science, another team reports seeing the same thing during thousands of observations of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf on Russia’s north coast, which is even more worrisome because it’s a huge methane deposit.
The shelf, which covers about 800,00 square miles, was exposed during the last ice age. When the region was above sea level, tundra vegetation pulled carbon dioxide from the air as plants grew. That organic material, much of which didn’t decompose in the frigid Arctic, accumulated in the soil and is the source of modern methane [Science News]. Now underwater, it’s covered by a layer of permafrost. But that permafrost seems to be becoming unstable, thanks to the fact that the water on top of it is warmer than the air it was exposed to back when it was on dry land.
The study said about 8 million tonnes of methane a year, equivalent to the annual total previously estimated from all of the world’s oceans, were seeping from vast stores long trapped under permafrost [Reuters]. Study leader Natalia Shakhova says methane levels in the Arctic haven’t been this high in 400,000 years. While we’re not about to teeter off a cliff—that 8 million tons is a small portion of the global emissions of 440 million tons—we should be concerned, the scientists say. Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, absorbing at least 25 times more heat, NOAA says.
It is possible that climate change could be contributing to the release, with warmer seas causing more methane to come out, creating a feedback loop. But methane has long been leaking, and there’s no record of the previous levels with which to verify how much methane emissions are increasing, or whether people are playing a part. While Shakhova says the warmer runoff into the Arctic ocean is probably contributing, the team can’t say that for sure.
What they can say for sure is that the methane levels there are extremely high. Most undersea methane oxidizes into CO2 as it enters the atmosphere, but Shakhova says the East Siberian Ice Shelf methane is too close to the surface for that to happen. As a result, she said, atmospheric levels of methane over the Arctic are 1.85 parts per million, almost three times as high as the global average of 0.6 or 0.7 parts per million. Concentrations over the shelf are 2 parts per million or higher [The New York Times].
The Moscow Times: Mr. Nyet
05 March 2010
By Michael Bohm
Russia’s new military doctrine offers a tried-and-true bogeyman — missile defense, which is listed as the country’s fourth-greatest external military danger. According to the doctrine, strategic missile defense will “undermine global stability and destroy the balance of power in the nuclear missile sphere.”
Whatever happened to the bold statements made between 2004 and 2007 by then-President Vladimir Putin, then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and leading generals that Russia’s new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles were “capable of penetrating any existing or future missile defense systems”? With such confidence in its offensive capabilities, it is odd that Russia has ranked missile defense as its No. 4 Danger.
Apart from this silver bullet, many people thought the Kremlin’s concern over missile defense was put to rest when U.S. President Barack Obama in September canceled plans to deploy elements of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now, however, Deputy Prime Minister Ivanov says Obama’s alternative — SM-3 interceptors to be deployed in the Black Sea territorial waters of Romania and possibly Bulgaria in 2015 — is “just as bad or even worse.” This criticism is bizarre considering that a year ago the Kremlin itself suggested these countries as an alternative to Central Europe.
How could these SM-3s possibly pose a danger to Russia’s security? With a range of only 500 kilometers — with plans to upgrade them to a maximum 1,000 kilometers by 2020 to reach Iranian midrange missiles in flight — the few dozen SM-3s planned for Romania or Bulgaria clearly cannot reach Russia’s ground-based nuclear weapons that are located thousands of kilometers away.
But Russia need not worry in any case. It takes roughly 10 interceptors to shoot down a single advanced missile — and this is only in the best of circumstances. To come even close to weakening Russia’s nuclear missile capabilities, the United States would have to place thousands of interceptors along the direct flight trajectory between Russia and the United States — perhaps in Greenland — and add thousands more interceptors to its installations in Alaska and California, which now number about 40 interceptors in total. Regardless of who is president, the U.S. House of Representatives would never approve the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to build such a massive missile defense system for the simple reason that the United States doesn’t view Russia as an enemy. The Cold War is long over.
What the United States is truly concerned about, however, is a single missile attack from a rogue country. This is why U.S. long-term strategic defense plans call for a global network of limited missile defense installations. But even at the height of this project, the number of interceptors would be too small and the locations would be too far removed from a Russia-U.S. missile trajectory to in any way weaken Russia’s strategic nuclear forces, undermine the country’s nuclear deterrence or destroy the nuclear balance of power.
If Danger No. 4 of the military doctrine is referring to a mythical U.S. “global nuclear shield” that would give the United States the ability to launch a nuclear first strike against Russia while being 100 percent protected against a retaliatory strike, this would be even more absurd. The Kremlin should remember U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program in the 1980s. It turned out to be the bluff of the century, and it is just as much science fiction today as it was then.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had parity with the United States as a superpower and was able to project its power all over the world. Now Moscow has trouble projecting its power even in the Commonwealth of Independent States. But one way it can still project its strength globally — and particularly vis-a-vis the United States — is to be the spoiler in international affairs, a modern-day version of “Mr. Nyet.”
Missile defense has become a great excuse for Russia to say “Nyet!” at every opportunity. The paradox is that while Russia disingenuously claims that U.S. missile defense undermines its security, it is precisely the absence of a nationwide missile defense system in Russia that undermines its security. The country is particularly vulnerable in the North Caucasus and Southern Federal districts and along its long border with China.
NATO and the United States have offered many times to build a limited joint missile defense with Moscow to protect against individual rogue nations that are located much closer to Russia and pose a threat to Russia no less than they do to the United States. The latest proposal for joint missile defense was put forward by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Feb. 23. But the Kremlin has no other choice but to say “Nyet” to these offers because it has driven itself into a corner. In cannot cooperate with the United States or NATO on missile defense when its firm, official position is that it will be used against Russia.
Although the Kremlin’s stubborn position could simply be a banal negotiation tactic to gain key U.S. concessions, it could also be meant to spoil — or, at the very least, stall — a follow-up treaty to START, which expired Dec. 5. For the past three months, senior U.S. and Russian officials have been making optimistic statements that a final deal is just weeks away, but each time last-minute snags prevent the agreement from being signed.
The Kremlin’s position could also be intended to snarl Obama’s larger global nuclear disarmament agenda — including the Global Nuclear Security Summit in April, which Obama will host in Washington, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May in New York. The Kremlin’s goal is clearly not to derail the two conferences since they are too important for global security but to simply make life difficult for Obama, who badly needs the START follow-up signed by both sides as soon as possible and well before the two conferences begin.
Impeding the START follow-up is also a paradox because reducing nuclear weapons is just as advantageous to Russia as it is to the United States. As long as there is nuclear parity between the two countries, any nuclear warheads exceeding roughly 1,000 are an unnecessary economic burden for both countries — especially for Russia — and don’t add any additional value in terms of deterrence. Nonetheless, when asked by a reporter Dec. 29 in Vladivostok what the biggest problem was in the negotiations, Putin said, “The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not.”
Missile defense is like Russia’s “Fairy Tale About the Little White Bull,” in which the same phrase is stubbornly repeated over and over again. In the real world, it is: “U.S. missile defense threatens Russian national security” — regardless of where it is deployed and its limited capacity.
As the antipode of former U.S. President George W. Bush, Obama has taken a diametrically opposite approach to Russia, and his “reset” program offers a real chance to improve U.S.-Russian relations. But it takes two to reset.
The Kremlin’s spoiler role on missile defense and other issues shows that it is determined to foil the reset. Russia’s liberal opposition leaders love to compare Russia to a restless teenager whose petty “hooliganism” in global politics is meant to remind the United States that it still exists as an international player and that key global issues cannot be resolved without Russia’s participation and consent.
Although the analogy could be dismissed as typical bile from the opposition, there is a positive side: In December, the Russian Federation turned 18, which means that in only two years Russia won’t be a “teenager” anymore in any case. This could be exactly what is needed to reset relations.
Michael Bohm is opinion page editor of The Moscow Times.
Pravda: Does NATO Really Think Russia is That Silly?
05.03.2010
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen believes Russia should resume negotiations about the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty.
The official also said that he was going to discuss the initiative regarding the nuclear disarmament with foreign ministers of 28 members of the alliance. He said that the volume of nuclear arms in the world was supposed to be reduced to the reasonable level which would be adequate to present-day threats.
Where does Rasmussen want Russia to be?
The above-mentioned treaty was signed on November 19, 1990 in Paris. There was another organization that existed during those times – the Warsaw Treaty Organization, or Warsaw Pact. The document restricted the number of arms, which the feuding blocs could have on the borderline between them.
The total number of arms for the two military blocs was not supposed to exceed the following quantities: 40,000 tanks, 60,000 armored vehicles, 40,000 heavy artillery units, 13,600 combat fighter jets and 4,000 combat helicopters. The numbers were altered during the 1990s.
The document was changed in 1992 following the break up of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Former Soviet states signed a separate treaty the same year in Uzbekistan. Russia’s quota made up 6,400 tanks, 11,480 armored vehicles, 6,415 artillery systems, 3,450 planes and 890 helicopters. In addition, Russia moved a big part of its heavy arms behind Ural Mountains.
Russia ratified the treaty in 1992, but her example did not inspire several other members of the former USSR. Azerbaijan and Georgia signed the document, but did not ratify it. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia refused to put their signatures on the document.
The situation in Europe had changed drastically by the end of the 1990s. USSR’s former Warsaw Pact partners – Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary - joined NATO in spite of the fact that NATO promised not to expand in the east. The change required an addition be made to the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which was done at the OSCE summit in Turkey on November 19, 1999.
The quotas of Russia and other countries of the former USSR remained on the level of the agreement signed in Uzbekistan. The quota for all NATO members was the following: 19,096 tanks, 31,787 armored vehicles, 19,529 artillery systems, 7,273 planes and 2,282 helicopters. The quota was subsequently increased later, after Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic States and Slovenia became NATO members.
The ratification of the document was quite a problematic matter. Only Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan ratified it. Georgia and Moldavia refused demanding the removal of Russian troops from their territories. Russia later decided to withdraw its army bases from those two countries, but said that the decision had nothing to do with the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty.
All Russian bases were liquidated in Georgia in ten years. Russia only left a small group of its troops in Transdniestria. The treaty did not come in effect: NATO members refused to ratify it claiming that Russia had not implemented its obligations.
The situation in Europe was worsening. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined NATO in 2004. The new members refused to sign the treaty. It means that these countries have no arms restricting obligations, and their territories can turn into a large warehouse of arms located only 500 kilometers far from Moscow and 200 kilometers far from St. Petersburg.
The situation became more serious in 2007, when the US administration planned to deploy missile defense system elements in Poland and the Czech Republic. NATO planes began to patrol the sky of the Baltic States, and the defense machine found itself very close to Russian borders.
Such an outcome was a total contradiction to all obligations of NATA members. As a result, Russia pulled out from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty at the end of 2007 since the most of its members did not meet the terms of the treaty.
A year later, Russia put forward a way out of the dead end – a new European security treaty. However, NATO secretary general repeatedly stated that he did not see any need in such an agreement. However, Mr. Rasmussen wants Russia to execute the agreement, which was never put in effect because of NATO members’ unwillingness to ratify it. He never said a word about it, of course.
Vadim Trukhachev
Pravda.Ru
The Moscow Times: Today in Vedomosti
Films Lose Takings to Pirates
By Ksenia Boletskaya
Russian Internet pirates strip popular films of about $1 million of their takings.
AvtoVAZ February Sales Down 31%
By Alexei Nepomnyashchy
For the second month AvtoVAZ has showed disappointing results: In February sales fell by 31 percent. The company does not intend to adjust its sales forecast of 450,000 cars in 2010, relying instead on its scrappage scheme to boost sales.
Editorial: Putin's and Kudrin's Varying Ideas of Responsible Policy
Vedomosti
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has suggested increasing pensions.
Editorial: Bastrykin Wants to Fingerprint Entire North Caucasus
Vedomosti
Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin proposed his own ideas Thursday about how to eliminate terrorism and crime in the North Caucasus.
Olympic Ticket Agent Faces Charges for HIgh Ticket Prices
By Yelena Vinogradova
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service is ready to bring charges against Olympic Panorama, the official ticket agent in Russia to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It had hiked ticket prices up 120 percent even though the International Olympics Committee limits the markup to 20 percent.
Russia Today: 05 March, 2010 in Russian Newspapers
Gaztea.ru: Russia’s GDP numbers are positive for the first time since the advent of the crisis
By Marina Sokolovskaya
At the end of February, the GDP indicator, which was calculated by VTB Capital, had gone up for the first time, reaching 0.5%. This means that since February of last year, the Russian economy had risen year on year. Meanwhile, at the end of 2009 the decline of GDP amounted to 7.9%. But economists have no illusions. According to them, the rate of Russia’s economic recovery has declined in the recent months.
Vedomosti: Bastrykin proposed fingerprinting residents of the Caucasus
By Sergey Smirnov
While speaking before a collegium of the General Prosecutor’s Office, the head of the Office’s Investigation Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, suggested introducing a mandatory fingerprint registration system for all citizens, refugees, and internally displaced persons living within the territory of the North Caucasus Federal District, Ria Novosti reports. Moreover, Bastrykin deemed it possible to obtain DNA for the formation of centralized databases. According to the head of the Investigation Committee, the new regulations will enable a more effective fight against organized crime.
Nezavisimaya: The expansion of NATO and Russia’s military doctrine
In early February, President Dmitry Medvedev signed into force Russia’s new military doctrine, which ranks NATO expansion high amongst the military threats posed to the country’s security
Ivan Sergeevich Malevich, retired colonel, PhD Military Sciences
More specifically, Russia’s updated doctrine mentions the “desire of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to provide its force potential with global functions, the implementation of which goes against international law, to bring the military infrastructure of the NATO member countries to the borders of the Russian Federation, including through the means of expanding the bloc.”
National Economic Trends
RBC: Russia's trade surplus creeps up
RBC, 05.03.2010, Moscow 11:56:19.Russia's trade surplus amounted to $15.7bn in January 2009, which is 72 percent or $6.6bn higher than in the corresponding month of 2008, the Federal Customs Service announced today. At the same time, surplus in trade with countries outside the CIS rose $5.9bn to $13.7bn, and with the CIS at $2.1bn, up $0.8bn.
Russia's foreign trade amounted to $35bn in the first month of the year (including data on trade with Belarus), which is 32.2 percent greater than in January 2009. Trade with countries outside the CIS jumped 30.1 percent to $29.8bn, and with the CIS climbed 45.9 percent to $5.2bn.
The country's exports amounted to $25.4bn, up 42.6 percent from January 2009. Among the top exported products were fuel and energy products, which accounted for 64 percent of total exports. Meanwhile, imports stood at $9.6bn, up 11 percent from a year earlier.
The European Union was Russia's largest economic partner, accounting for 51.5 percent of Russia's trade. The CIS's share stood at 15 percent and APEC member countries' share was 8.2 percent.
2010-03-05 08:04
Reuters: Russia c.bank shifts again rouble lower trading band
MOSCOW, March 5 (Reuters) - The Russian central bank on Friday moved the rouble's lower band boundary for the second time this week as strong oil prices pressures the rouble to firm.
The central bank shifted the rouble's band to 34.60 versus the dollar-euro basket from previous 34.65 after purchasing $700 million on the market, local dealers said.
The central bank keeps the rouble in a floating corridor, estimated currently by market participants at 34.60-37.60 and which the regulator shifts 5 kopecks for each $700 million in purchases made to avoid rapid fluctuations in the rouble's rate.
Strong oil prices, climbing towards $81 a barrel on Friday after China signalled it would maintain its economic stimulus increased investors' confidence and interest in riskier, but higher-yielding assets, such as the rouble.
(Reporting by Andrei Ostroukh; writing by Lidia Kelly; editing by Dmitry Sergeyev)Keywords: RUSSIA/ROUBLE
(lidia.kelly@; +7 495 775 1242)
The Moscow Times: Kudrin Protests as Pensions Increased
05 March 2010
The Moscow Times
The government will increase pensions by 6.3 percent next month despite warnings from Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin on Thursday that the budget cannot afford it.
"We have the means, and I think the decision to increase pensions will not affect the macroeconomic conditions," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a Cabinet meeting. The increase signifies "carrying out our responsibilities before our citizens," Putin added.
The pension fund may see a deficit of up to 170 billion rubles ($5.71 billion) if any increases not indicated in the legislation are made, Kudrin said. By law, pensions can be increased if the Pension Fund makes a profit or if inflation is especially high. The fund's profits did not increase, nor will they increase in the current year, and inflation is expected at clock in at 5.6 percent to 7.5 percent in 2010. Therefore, the law does not allow for a pension increase, Kudrin said, RIA-Novosti reported.
"We have the money," Putin replied. "Our ability to lower inflation last year … indicates that we can maintain macroeconomic conditions as planned," he said.
03/05/2010 10:14
AgriMarket: Russia to avoid selling grains from the intervention fund on the open market
During recent two years, grain production in Russia reached the brand new level: the average annual harvest exceed the index of 100 mln tonnes. As a result, despite the growth of export supplies (to the level of 20-24 mln tonnes), the carry-over stocks of grains also increased, including the intervention fund reserves — to the level of 10 mln tonnes at the sum of 45 bln RUR. To date, the existing price situation does not allow selling the grain on the open market, including export trading operations, declared Elena Skrynnik, the Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, on February 17.
According to her, the Ministry assumes special measures in order to stabilize the situation in the industry, increase profitability of production, and also usage of grains from intervention fund and decrease the budge expenditures.
Besides, the Ministry provides work at realization of grain stocks from the intervention fund on the foreign market, especially through various humanitarian programs.
The department also works out the program of development of the infrastructure and logistics maintenance of the agro industrial market, and plans to impose the differentiated decreasing coefficient of grain transportation by railway transport from the Volga, Central and Siberian Federal Districts.
According to the head of the Ministry, the department also develops various offers of correction of principles of price determining for realization of grain purchasing interventions. The main idea consists in connection of grain prices to the prime cost of grain production in the most effective agricultural enterprises.
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
Bloomberg: Gazprom, Lukoil, Mechel, Polyus Gold: Russian Equity Preview
By Anastasia Ustinova
March 5 (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 rose 0.4 percent to 1,384.44 at the close in Moscow. The dollar-denominated RTS Index advanced 0.7 percent to 1,470.41.
OAO Gazprom (GAZP RX): NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy paid for February natural-gas imports from Russia in full, the Ukrainian state energy company said today in an e-mailed statement. Shares in the world’s largest natural-gas monopoly rose the most in two weeks, adding 1.1 percent to 172.04 rubles.
OAO Lukoil (LKOH RX): Crude oil fell as the dollar climbed against the euro, reducing the appeal of commodities as an alternative investment. Shares in Russia’s largest non-state oil producer were little changed at 1,625.68 rubles.
OAO Mechel (MTLR RX): Mechel agreed to extend $1 billion of loans from OAO Gazprombank to six years from three, the Russian steel and coal producer said today in an e-mailed statement. Shares fell 0.2 percent to 715.45 rubles.
OAO Polyus Gold (PLZL RX): Gold futures fell the most in a month as a rebound by the dollar reduced demand for the precious metal as an alternative investment. Shares in the country’s biggest producer of the metal fell 0.7 percent to 1,448.35 rubles.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anastasia Ustinova in St. Petersburg at austinova@.
Last Updated: March 4, 2010 22:00 EST
Russia Today: New retail law comes into effect in Russia
05 March, 2010, 10:48
This week has seen a new trade law come into force. It regulates retailers and suppliers in an attempt to make their relationship more transparent and prices lower. Insiders say the effect may be the opposite.
The Trade Law is the subject of hot debate, even though it's now in force. Professionals say that in a rush to pass the law, legislators forgot their original goal of lower prices, believes Andrey Goltsblat, Managing Partner of Goltsblat BLP.
“Retail will be limited now in terms of bonuses. Previously they charged suppliers for assortment, shelf supply, volumes, now they can only charge for volume, but suppliers are not happy with the volume premium – so somehow the retail trade needs to find a way to fill that gap and an obvious way is to increase retail prices.”
That's not good news for retailers, most of them struggling to recover from the crisis, nor for customers. Non-food retailers were among the hardest hit last year, says Arkady Pekarevsky, Vice President of Sela clothing chain.
“The number of buyers is down, and while the average bill is up as prices have risen, the number of goods purchased has fallen. Yes, we're earning less that we used to.”
But sales growth has turned positive, on an annual basis, since December and the outlook is positive, says Aleksey Krivoshapko, Director Properity Capital Management.
“We assume that for 2010 we should expect the total income of the population to go up in roubles by 10-11% and the market on the retail side to go up in the same level.”
Analysts say that retailers will be able to absorb the cost of the new rules over the next year so long as the economy continues to recover.
RBC: Regulators to weigh regional competition
Regulators are poised to poll businessmen
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) are gearing up to poll entrepreneurs for their assessment of the competitive environment in the regions. For that matter, Russia is developing its own competition assessment techniques for the first time ever, since executive authorities and experts always relied on foreign surveys in the past.
According to RBC Daily’s source in the antitrust watchdog, while Rosstat is drafting polling techniques, the regulator will provide the statistics agency with a sample of businessmen who are known to have come across violations of the law on competition in their respective regions. The questionnaire is still in the development stage, though the plans are to put it to use in the near future.
An official at the Economy Ministry observed that both Russia and the rest of the world lacked universal and impartial indicators to assess the competitive environment. Both the government and experts depend on the findings of the World Bank’s Doing Business reports and surveys by a number of foreign audit firms for assessments of competition in Russia. In Russia, the issue also falls within the scope of interests of the Higher School of Economics.
“Polling businessmen is probably the only way to really know what is going on out in the regions,” Natalya Akindinova, CEO of the Development Center of the Higher School of Economics, said. In her opinion, the difficulties of drafting such a questionnaire could be reduced to the trouble of panel sampling (determining respondents). “It is also important who will be polling businessmen. Most likely, the statistics agency will take up these functions,” she explained.
According to Natalya Chudakova, executive board member at OPORA Rossii, a nationwide organization for small and medium-sized businesses, while businessmen are open to discussions of competition issues from their own experience, it is vital for them that the polls are not held without avail, and that the findings are used by competition development decision makers, . “Raids have become more frequent in the regions, assuming a more sophisticated form, and retailers are still dumping, meaning no equal conditions for procurement are possible.”
The polls, therefore, could prove really instrumental for monitoring competition. It is crucial that the antitrust regulator not only take note of the findings, but also promptly act on them to lift the competition barriers.
Analytical department of RIA RosBusinessConsulting
Bloomberg: Deripaska Said to Pick Bank of China for SMR Share Sale Plan
March 05, 2010, 4:14 AM EST
By Yuriy Humber and Bei Hu
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, whose United Co. Rusal became the first Russian company to sell shares in Hong Kong, picked the securities unit of Bank of China Ltd. to help manage the sale of mining company SMR, according to two people familiar with the plans.
BOC International Holdings Ltd. has the mandate to manage the Hong Kong initial public offering, said the people who declined to be identified because the talks are private. The bank may also help arrange the IPO of Deripaska’s power generator OAO EuroSibEnergo, which is yet to decide where to list, the people said, adding the sales may take place this year.
Any sale in Hong Kong will need to convince investors that the companies, owned by Deripaska’s EN+ Group Ltd., won’t repeat Rusal’s 21 percent drop since its listing in January, the worst IPO performance on the exchange this year. Rusal may pave the way for as many as 10 Russian companies to sell shares in the city, bourse operator Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. said.
“EN+ is still interested in the public offering of shares of its assets, but we won’t discuss any details,” Andrei Petrushinin, spokesman for EN+, said by phone in Moscow today.
Rusal, the world’s biggest aluminum producer, dropped 0.4 percent to HK$8.50 at 12:29 p.m. in Hong Kong. The shares touched a low of HK$7.37 on Feb. 18, down from the IPO price of HK$10.80.
BOC International will be the sole sponsor of the SMR share sale, said one of the people. An official in the public relations department of BOC International, who didn’t want to give her name, declined to comment. She said spokeswoman Maria Kong was out of the office.
Mongolian Holding
SMR produces more than 6 percent of the global supply of ferro-molybdenum which is used to make stainless steel. The company also owns a share in Buka Mining, which holds a development license for gold, silver and copper deposits in Mongolia, according to its Web site.
SMR’s former Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey Cowley valued SMR at $700 million in 2008, when it was considering an IPO in Hong Kong. EuroSibEnergo may list in Hong Kong this year, after raising between $1 billion and $2 billion, the South China Morning Post reported Feb. 19, citing unidentified bankers who worked on the Rusal IPO.
The Chinese market is becoming “more and more important” for Deripaska’s business empire and his main holding company Basic Element is considering partnerships with Chinese insurance companies, automakers and pulp producers, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Andrei Elinson said last month.
SMR agreed to refinance $122 million of loans on March 1 with BNP Paribas SA, ING Groep NV, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc., Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich AG, and Alfa Bank.
Companies controlled by Deripaska restructured about $20 billion of debt in the past year following a plunge in commodity prices and a contraction in the Russian economy. Rusal agreed in December to restructure almost $17 billion of borrowings before its IPO. Automaker OAO GAZ agreed March 1 to delay payments on 39 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) of debt.
Debt Concern
Concern over the debt prompted the Hong Kong stock exchange to bar Rusal from marketing to retail investors. The company cut its debt in February after paying $2.14 billion to banks and billionaire shareholder Mikhail Prokhorov from the $2.2 billion raised by its IPO. Debt dropped to $12.9 billion, according to a Feb. 4 statement. Its market value is $16.6 billion.
EuroSibEnergo will probably pick three banks in total for its IPO, with EN+ also talking to Deutsche Bank AG on the sale.
EuroSibEnergo, Russia’s largest closely-held energy company, sells about 50 percent of the power it produces to Rusal, according to its Web site. The company was created in September last year when EN+ Group consolidated its energy assets into a single company.
Sales last year exceeded 76.2 billion rubles, the company said Feb. 4. The company’s power plants have capacity of 19.5 gigawatts, the Web site said. Most of the company’s capacity is located in parts of Russia close to Mongolia and China.
Share Sales
Russian companies are seeking to sell more than $20 billion of shares this year, the most since 2007, to help repair balance sheets after the country’s deepest recession on record, according to Renaissance Capital.
Russian share sales have been “lamentable” for investors, with more than half of stocks sold over the past decade underperforming the market by more than 10 percent, the nation’s oldest investment bank Troika Dialog said March 3.
In only two years, 2000 and 2007, have stocks sold in initial or secondary public offerings outperformed the benchmark dollar-measured RTS Index, the bank said.
Trading in Moscow-based Rusal will be key to Asian investors’ perception of further share sales from companies located in Russia, Reinout Koopmans, Deutsche Bank AG’s head of equity capital markets for emerging Europe, said last month.
-- Editors: Andrew Hobbs, Tan Hwee Ann
To contact the reporters on this story: Yuriy Humber in Moscow at yhumber@; Bei Hu in Hong Kong at bhu5@;
To contact the editors responsible for this story Simon Casey at scasey4@ Andrew Hobbs in Sydney at ahobbs@ Andreea Papuc at apapuc1@
Bloomberg: Rusagro Taps Credit Suisse, Alfa, Rencap for May IPO: Kommersant
By Alex Nicholson
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Rusagro agricultural holding company has hired Credit Suisse Group AG, Renaissance Capital and Alfa Bank to organize a share sale on the London Stock Exchange in May, the Kommersant newspaper reported, citing an unidentified banker. The company plans to raise as much as $300 million from the sale of a 30 percent stake, according to the Moscow-based paper.
Last Updated: March 5, 2010 00:33 EST
Reuters: Russia's Russkoye Morye plans $200 mln IPO—source
Fri Mar 5, 2010 1:45pm IST
MOSCOW, March 5 (Reuters) - Russian seafood producer Russkoye Morye plans to raise $200 million in an initial public offering in Russia and to start the share placement in late March, a banking source close to the deal said on Friday.
"The company will sell shares on Russian bourses," the source told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.
Maxim Vorobyov, the controlling shareholder in Russkoye Morye, declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
(Reporting by Olga Popova, writing by Dmitry Sergeyev)
((dmitry.sergeev@; +7 495 775 1242; Reuters Messaging: dmitry.sergeev.@)) Keywords: RUSSKOYEMORYE/IPO
March 05, 2010 10:29
Interfax: NLMK gets 7.75% yield on bonds in 12-mth low for Russian market
MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax) - Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) (RTS: NLMK) has now closed the order book for 10 billion rubles in commercial paper in the form of series Bo-06 exchange bonds, which will yield 7.75% p.a., the lowest for any issuer of three-year exchange bonds since the spring of 2009.
The Russian steel major said 92 bids ranged from 7.00% to 8.25% p.a. during marketing and that demand was 30.92 billion rubles. The company eventually set a rate of 7.75% for the first coupon.
NLMK also said it was preparing to offer 50 billion rubles in ten-year conventional local-currency bonds.
Pr
Bloomberg: Norilsk Bids to Process Soviet-Era Copper Stocks to Meet Demand
By Maria Kolesnikova and Yuriy Humber
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel, Russia’s largest mining company, offered to process “substantial” amounts of the nation’s copper stockpiled during the Soviet era as the company struggles to meet demand with its own supplies.
“We are running short of copper and could be selling more than we are producing,” Deputy Chief Executive Officer Oleg Pivovarchuk said March 2 in an interview in Moscow, declining to say whether Norilsk would buy the metal or just process it. “We made a serious offer to the government for the copper.”
Moscow-based Norilsk submitted its offer to Rosreserve, the federal agency overseeing the inventories, about two weeks ago and it anticipates the proposal may be approved by April or May so stockpiles can be processed before winter, Pivovarchuk said.
Norilsk CEO Vladimir Strzhalkovsky on Jan. 30 met Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and asked him to help speed up approval of the plan. An account of the meeting on the government’s Web site didn’t give details of the company’s offer, saying only that it involved state reserves of copper concentrate, a semi- processed ore that is shipped from mines to smelters.
The company is seeking ways to benefit from a price rebound as its production falters because it is mining ore with a lower copper content. Strzhalkovsky, who forecast copper production will drop 5 percent for a second year in 2010, told Putin that allowing Norilsk to process the state reserves will help use up idle capacity, according to the government’s Web site.
Norilsk will mix stockpiled concentrate, which contains nickel, precious metals and cobalt as well as copper, with its lower-grade feed, he said. The company doesn’t maintain any stockpiles of copper or nickel, Pivovarchuk said.
Speculative Gains
Prices for copper, used in wires and pipes, and nickel, a stainless steel raw material, have been driven higher by speculation and may be unsustainable, he said. Copper for three- month delivery on the London Metal Exchange more than doubled last year and traded at $7,402 a metric ton late yesterday, while nickel jumped 58 percent and traded at $22,300 a ton.
Nickel producers may restart idled capacity should prices hold above $20,000 a ton, adding to a surplus this year that may reach 25,000 tons to 30,000 tons, Pivovarchuk said.
“Every additional 25,000 to 40,000 tons could have a very negative impact” if investor sentiment on nickel turns causing a plunge in price similar to the one in 2008, he said. “The higher the price is now, the lower it will fall.”
A copper price above $7,000 a ton is “unjustified,” while palladium is “clearly undervalued” and should cost “somewhere between platinum and gold,” Pivovarchuk said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Maria Kolesnikova in Moscow at mkolesnikova@, Yuriy Humber in Moscow at yhumber@
Last Updated: March 4, 2010 23:01 EST
SteelOrbis: » Russian quota utilization for Ukraine
According to the information issued by the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy, up to March 1, 2010, Ukraine utilized 12.48 percent of its annual quota for rebar exports to Russia and 48.87 percent of its yearly quota for cold rolled steel exports to the same destination, supplying a total of 49,901 metric tons and 102,620 metric tons respectively. In the last four months, Ukraine did not deliver any cold rolled steel products to Russia.
According to the agreement between Russia and Ukraine, the 2010 annual quota for Ukraine regarding rebar exports to Russia is 400,000 metric tons - up from 363,000 metric tons in 2009. The quota is for the 12 months from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010.
Meanwhile, also according to the agreement signed between the countries, Ukraine's yearly quota for cold rolled exports to Russia stands at 210,000 metric tons for the 12 months from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010.
RenCap: Mechel continues optimising its debt burden and raising debt capital for the Elga project
Rencap
March 5, 2010
Event: Yesterday (4 Mar), Mechel announced the extension of credit lines with Gazprombank totalling $1bn. The credit lines' maturity was extended from three to six years. Gazprombank opened credit lines for Mechel in Feb 2009 that were used to finance working capital requirements. On 4 Mar, Mechel also started accepting bids for a RUB5bn ($168mn) bond issue. Bids will be accepted until 12 Mar, and the coupon may be 10.75-11.5%, according to Interfax, which cites unidentified banking sources.
Action: The news is positive for Mechel, in our view.
Rationale: Mechel's net debt as at 30 Sep 2009 was $5.1bn. The agreement on a credit line extension with Gazprombank obviously strengthens the company's financial position from a mid-term perspective. In Dec 2009, Mechel negotiated a three-year roll-over of VTB credit lines totalling RUB15bn ($517mn). As for the bond issue, Mechel's board approved the issuance of RUB45bn ($1.5bn) in bonds to finance Elga Coal capex, and the company has since registered nine RUB5bn tranches on MICEX. Mechel is currently in the process of placing the third tranche. On 3 Sep 2009, Vedomosti published details of a meeting between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and industry representatives in Mirny (Yakutia) on 21 Aug 2009 at which the prime minister asked state-run banks and government agencies to consider state guarantees for Mechel's bond issues (click here to read Mechel secures official state support for Elga Coal project, in the 3 Sep 2009 CIS Morning Monitor). According to Mechel's management, the aforesaid state guarantees have already been budgeted by the government.
Boris Krasnojenov
Bloomberg: Aviva Seeks to Buy Russian Insurers at Quarter Pre-Crisis Price
March 05, 2010, 3:37 AM EST
By Jason Corcoran
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Aviva Plc, the U.K.’s second-biggest insurer, is seeking to buy Russian competitors at less than a quarter of their price before the global credit crisis, said Andrei Dubinin, chief executive officer of Aviva Russia.
Local insurers can be bought for the equivalent of their annual revenue from premiums or less, compared with four times before the global financial crisis hit Russia in September 2008, Dubinin said in an interview at the company’s Moscow office.
“We are monitoring new opportunities,” said Dubinin, without identifying possible targets. “Russia is a key market for us because it’s the most populated country in Europe with a very low level of penetration.”
--Editors: Alex Nicholson, Gavin Serkin
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Corcoran at Jcorcoran13@
MARCH 5, 2010
Wall Street Journal: The Pitfalls of Buying a Stake in the Russian Dream
By LIAM DENNING
It has never been easier to grab your own little slice of the Russian dream. Just don't expect to sleep well at night.
[pic]
Russian firms are planning another $20 billion of stock sales in the next 12 to 18 months, according to brokerage Troika Dialog, following a hiatus during the global financial crisis. Quite rationally, Russian firms want to tap those foreign investors keen to diversify into one of the world's biggest developing markets.
To date, though, investors taking the plunge haven't much to show for it. UC Rusal's initial public offering in January, an offer so good regulators felt compelled to protect retail investors by not letting them participate, is only the most recent flop: Its stock is down 30%.
Including Rusal, there have been 19 Russian IPOs or follow-on offerings for $500 million or more on foreign exchanges since the start of 2005, according to Dealogic. Say you bought a 1% stake in each and reinvested the dividends. Your total return would be a negative 7.2%. Strip out one company, gas producer Novatek, and that return falls to negative 16.4%.
Given that 11 of these companies sold shares in the bull market of 2007, you might think that loss isn't so bad. But it fits a wider trend. Troika says Russian capital raisings have had "a lamentable track record" over the past 10 years, trailing the RTS index by 16% on average.
Besides macroeconomic factors, the structure of Russian IPOs presents a problem. In short, they are often too similar to Rusal's in terms of restricting ownership at the outset.
The largest, oil giant Rosneft's in 2006, is another example. London's regulators weren't the issue. Instead, a host of strategic buyers who likely valued relations with the Kremlin above intrinsic value were cajoled into taking stakes. The total return to date for the stock is 6.4%, despite Rosneft's favorable access to one of the world's biggest pools of energy reserves and the benefit of having acquired assets from eviscerated rival Yukos very cheaply.
Overall, the 19 foreign listings analyzed floated less than 20% of their equity on average. Minority shareholders compensate for the risk by discounting the stock price. Measly dividends are probably a corollary of such low free floats and don't help either: The RTS's dividend yield hovers just above 1%, making even the S&P 500's 2% look generous. If Russian companies want to keep foreign buyers interested, they should offer something a bit more tangible up front, not just dreams of future prosperity.
Write to Liam Denning at liam.denning@
Itar-Tass: Russia to launch project to dispose used cars on March 8
05.03.2010, 10.56
KALUGA, March 5 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia will launch the federal project to dispose used cars in the Kaluga region on March 8 that will last until November 1, 2009, the press service of the gubernatorial authorities said on Friday.
Some 16 car dealers and three car scrapping companies were selected in the region. Complete cars produced after 1999 with the weight of 3.5 tonnes and being in possession of the latest car owner more than a year are subject to scrapping. All people wishing to buy a new car instead of the old one subject to disposal can have the right for a discount of 50,000 roubles.
Under the terms of the experiment a car owner pays 3,000 roubles for the disposal services. Several procedures of the federal program were developed in the Kaluga region. The car owner drops the car from the registration database independently in the traffic police and hands it in a disposal station. A car dealer or a disposal station drops the car from the registration database under the power of attorney. A hotline was opened for the information support of the experiment in the regional ministry of economic development.
Under the program for the disposal of used cars the Kaluga region hopes to whip up the demand in the cars. In the previous year the demand fell substantially by 22%, but now it started growing.
The Kaluga region turned in the major car center in Russia. A plant to assemble Volkswagen cars was commissioned, the production of Peugeot, Citroen and Mitsubishi cars will be launched in April. After these car plants have been launched the region will create a full-fledged car cluster. At the first stage the industrial assemblage of 45,000 cars annually, it is planned to assemble 150,000 cars annually with reaching the full production cycle by 2012. The Kaluga region is planning to produce cars Peugeot 308, Peugeot 4007, Citroen – C4, Citroen C-Crosser and Mitsubishi Outlander XC.
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
Rigzone: RussNeft Gets Green Light to Develop Russian Field
OAO NK RussNeft 3/4/2010
URL:
RussNeft has obtained a license to explore for and produce hydrocarbons within the limits of the Lusianinskoye oil field in Russia. The license is valid until February 2030.
Discovered in 2008, the Lusianinskoye oil field is situated in Engels District 30 km to the south-east of Saratov. The pioneer of the oil field was exploration well No 4. Testing the well gave oil-free flowing with an average daily flow rate of about 95 cbm.
During the two years, geological services of the Company have studied and itemized the structure of the Lusianinskoye oil field in order to prepare for operation. In 2008, taking into consideration the re-interpretation of the data of 3D seismic works, an operative assessment of hydrocarbons was performed. Location of the next exploration well was recommended. In 2009, one more exploration well was drilled and an additional study of the resource base of the new well was undertaken. As a result, (within the limits of the license area) three more hydrocarbon deposits were discovered: gas, gas condensate and oil-and-gas. At present the recoverable reserves of Lusianinskoye oilfield in C1+C2 amount to 273 thousand tons.
RussNeft plans to commence commercial production at the Lusianinskoye oil field within two years.
Rigzone: Tatneft Puts DCP Technology to Work to Maximize Production
Tatneft 3/4/2010
URL:
OAO Tatneft continues to develop the technology of dual completion and production (DCP) of two or more layers through one borehole. By the beginning of this year appropriate equipment was installed in 564 wells. Incremental oil production from the beginning of the systems operation exceeded 1.1 million tons with the average increase in production rate per well amounting to 3.7 tons per day. In addition, the technology of dual completion and injection (DCI) was implemented at 135 injection wells. In the process of implementation and operation of wells with DCP is continuously being improved in view of the equipment, as well as the technologies applied.
Additional 170 DCP systems have been scheduled for installation in 2010 with introduction of DCI technology at 93 injection wells. The strategic goal is to reach the amount of 1 million tons of oil annual production through application of these technologies.
Application of DCP and DCI technologies allows to:
• produce concurrently from a number of targets with different reservoir parameters and reservoir fluid properties;
• improve profitability of individual wells through the involvement of other development targets or different layers of the same target with varying productivity;
• reduce the amount of drilling through the use of one wellbore and the arrangement of simultaneous (concurrent) production of crude oil from different layers with application of one well spacing pattern;
• Manufacturing of the equipment has been arranged at the sites of the service companies OOO TMS-group Management Company and OOO Systema-Service Management Company
Georgian Daily: Russia’s Energy Development Drive Slows Down
March 04, 2010
Sergei Blagov
Against the background of difficult international energy market conditions Russian companies have become less interested in finding new oil and gas fields and developing existing deposits. Notably, the country’s gas monopoly Gazprom dropped its earlier plans to take over a giant Kovykta deposit and has postponed the development of yet another huge project, Shtokman.
Earlier this month, Russia’s subsoil resources agency, Rosnedra, issued a forecast indicating that the country’s energy companies were likely to find fewer new deposits. New discoveries amounted to a total of 620 million tons of oil and 580 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas in 2009, but the number is expected to drop by 14 percent this year and decline further in 2011-2012, the agency said (Interfax, February 2).
However, Natural Resources and Environment Minister, Yuri Trutnev, argued that by January 1, 2010 the country’s proven oil resources equaled 1990 levels, due to the continued programs of geological research, aimed at finding new oil deposits (Interfax, RIA-Novosti, February 3). In March 2008, the natural resources and environment ministry suggested doubling government funding for all geological research projects, up to 40 billion rubles ($1.33 billion) per year in 2011-2020, or up from about 20 billion rubles ($851 million) in 2007. However, in 2010 the government is yet to confirm these figures.
Amid the weakening international energy demand, Russian oil and gas giants apparently became less keen to develop existing deposits. Notably, Gazprom said it was no longer interested in the acquisition of the giant Kovykta gas field in Eastern Siberia’s Irkutsk region. On February 3, Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller announced that the company would not need Kovykta to export gas to Asia-Pacific. Gazprom would rely on its deposits in Western Siberia and Yakutiya for that purpose, he said. Until November 2009, Miller had insisted that Gazprom was interested in the Kovykta deal (Interfax, RIA-Novosti, February 3).
On February 17, the country’s environmental watchdog, Rosprirodnadzor, said in a statement that it recommended withdrawing the Kovykta license. However, Russia's subsoil resources agency Rosnedra did not review the recommendation on February 19, and the matter was put off until March 4 (RIA-Novosti, February 19).
Last summer, TNK-BP reportedly tried to find another buyer, including Rosneft’s shareholder Rosneftegaz, but Kovykta was not sold. Subsequently, TNK-BP may be losing not only the Kovykta license but also the $664 million it spent to develop the deposit. BP’s Russian subsidiary TNK-BP is the main shareholder in Rusia Petroleum, which still holds the license to operate Kovykta. TNK-BP owns 63 percent in Rusia Petroleum. Russia’s Interros controls 26 percent and the Irkutsk regional government holds 11 percent.
In 2007, Russian authorities targeted the Kovykta project, officially for failing to fulfill its 9 bcm per year production quota. The regulatory pressures were understood to be aimed at putting the giant Kovykta gas field, which is estimated to hold between 2 and 3 trillion cubic meters (some 71-106 trillion cubic feet) of gas, under state control.
However, three years ago, Moscow refrained from stripping TNK-BP of its Kovykta license, but administrative pressures apparently helped a state-run energy giant to clinch a deal. In June 2007, Gazprom, Britain’s BP and TNK-BP agreed that Gazprom was to acquire a 63 percent stake in Kovykta. TNK-BP, which is Russia’s third-largest crude producer, also pledged that its natural gas producing subsidiary, Rospan International, would form a joint venture with Gazprom.
Prior to the June 2007 deal, Gazprom repeatedly denied any interest in Kovykta, and insisted that demand for Kovykta was not expected before 2015. The companies initially planned to finalize the Kovykta deal in the third quarter of 2007, but the deadline was repeatedly postponed.
Meanwhile, another Russian state-run energy giant became less keen to use its licenses. On February 16, Vostok Schmidt Neftegaz, a joint venture between Rosneft and BP, voluntarily discontinued its license to develop the East Schmidt deposit of Sakhalin-5 project (Interfax, February 16). Furthermore, the development of another major project, Shtokman, was put off. On February 16, Shtokman Development said production at the giant Shtokman gas field may start in 2016, or three years later than originally planned. It also said the project may not include liquefied natural gas (LNG) production during its first stage, and a final decision on LNG is due in 2011 (Interfax, February 16).
In February 2008, Gazprom, France’s Total and Norway’s StatoilHydro signed an agreement to create Swiss-registered Shtokman Development AG that would develop and finance the Shtokman project. Gazprom and its partners pledged to start gas supplies from the Shtokman field, with estimated gas reserves of 3.7 trillion cubic meters (131 trillion cubic feet), by the end of 2013 and start LNG supplies in 2014.
The project’s first phase was expected to produce some 23.7 billion cubic meters (837 billion cubic feet) of natural gas annually. The total cost of the Shtokman project to develop the Arctic off-shore gas field was earlier estimated at $30 billion.
Source:
Gazprom
UpstreamOnline: Gazprom signs up for Kudu
Russian giant Gazprom and Namibian state oil company Namcor have agreed to establish a special purpose company to take a majority stake in the Kudu gas field to accelerate its progress to first production in 2014.
Iain Esau 05 March 2010 04:51 GMT
Read more in today's edition of Upstream
Published: 05 March 2010 04:51 GMT | Last updated: 05 March 2010 08:55 GMT
MARCH 4, 2010, 10:36 A.M. ET
Dow Jones: UPDATE: Gazprom CEO Expects To Return To Pre-Crisis Output Level Soon
adds quote, analyst comment, background.)
By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
MOSCOW (Dow Jones)--Russian gas firm OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) expects to increase production to pre-economic crisis levels soon, the company's Chief Executive Alexei Miller said Thursday, following news that output in January and February rose 14% compared to a year ago.
"Without doubt this [news] pleases us and gives optimism that, for the near-term prospect, we will return to supplying pre-crisis volumes to domestic and export markets," said Miller.
Last year, Gazprom's output fell 16% as demand for natural gas at home and in Europe--the company's key export market-- fell amid an economic slowdown. Russia supplies around a quarter of Europe's gas needs, but lost market share last year as consumers bought more gas from Norway and Algeria.
This year, an unusually cold winter in Europe increased demand for Russian gas on the continent, but Miller also attributed "the significant rise in demand" to a "gradual revival of the economy".
Some industry observers are skeptical of Gazprom's optimism, however, and say the company may face further difficulties with both prices and market share under increasing pressure.
Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie predicts oversupply in Europe in the next five years.
"Despite the general trend of rising imports into Europe, the European market will see a further increase in both established and new gas suppliers competing to place volumes," analysts from Wood Mackenzie said in a report released Thursday.
Company Web site: gazprom.ru
-By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, Dow Jones Newswires; +7 495 232 9197; jacob.pedersen@
RBC: Gazprom: production to reach pre-crisis level soon
RBC, 04.03.2010, Moscow 18:44:43.Gazprom increased its natural gas production by 14 percent in January-February compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, Chairman of Gazprom's Executive Committee Alexei Miller announced at a meeting with Perm Region Governor Oleg Chirkunov. According to the Russian energy holding's press office, Miller and Chirkunov signed an agreement on cooperation between the company and the region's administration for an unlimited period.
Miller also stated that the company's current production rate had instilled optimism in Gazprom's management. "The 14-percent increase is so inspiring compared to the 16-percent drop we saw last year. The cold winter in Russia and Europe undoubtedly played a role in this, but generally, the increase is related to the economy's gradual rehabilitation."
The Moscow Times: Gazprom Middlemen Face Audit On Exports
05 March 2010
By Yelena Mazneva, Irina Reznik and Maxim Tovkailo / Vedomosti
Gazprom has decided to conduct an audit of its export intermediaries, most likely because of the unusual scheme used by Tancredo Enterprises, a firm co-owned by a Gazprombank subsidiary. Eight years ago, a similar check cost Gazexport chief Yury Vyakhirev his post, but Gazprom managers do not expect any major resignations this time.
Gazprom is conducting an internal audit of export schemes to sideline unnecessary intermediaries, a manager at the state-run gas export monopoly told Vedomosti. Interfax reported the same information, citing a company source. A Gazprom spokesperson said "planned work" was being done.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said only that the government's "general trajectory is to eliminate unnecessary intermediaries and move all contracts to a direct and transparent track."
None of the people who spoke to Vedomosti would say what the check's outcome would be. The last such probe at Gazprom that became known to the public ended in scandal in 2002.
In 2001, when Alexei Miller had just taken the helm at Gazprom, then-President Putin told him how to challenge the previous management's legacy. The first order of business was getting rid of middlemen who were reselling Russian fuel abroad at a higher price.
"So why are we selling for so cheap?" Putin asked Miller. "Where's the difference? Where's the money?"
Miller promised to get rid of the intermediaries, and the following year an audit was conducted at Gazexport — now known as Gazprom Export — on its operations from 1998 to 2001. The special commission from Gazprom found, for example, that "unexplained sums" from accounts receivable were written off from Gazexport's balance sheet, even as a subsidiary was allowing East European customers, such as Bulgaria's Overgas, Yugoslavia's Progressgas Trading and the Polish firms Bartimpex and Gas-Trading, to not pay for deliveries for up to half a year — resulting in losses of about $144 million.
After the checks, Gazexport chief executive Yury Vyakhirev — son of Miller's predecessor at Gazprom, Rem Vyakhirev — resigned, although he denied that it was connected to the audit. Officials at Gazprom and Gazexport said they did not think that his departure was a coincidence, however.
It remains unclear what precipitated the new audit. The only explanation so far was posited by two sources close to Gazprom's management, who said the check was in response to the export scheme of Cyprus-registered Tancredo Enterprises, which is part-owned by a Gazprombank subsidiary.
In October, two sources at Gazprom-controlled companies described the situation to Vedomosti. Gazprombank-controlled Sibneftegaz is selling gas to Gazprom firms, which are exporting the fuel and selling it to Tancredo. Tancredo, in turn, is selling the gas back to Gazprom at European prices, which are almost five times higher than prices in Russia.
The scheme involves a number of legal entities. Two individuals, citing data from Gazprom, were able to explain the details, but Vedomosti was not able to confirm the information.
Since 2007, Gazprombank-controlled companies have been selling Sibneftegaz's gas to Gazprom subsidiaries for $23 per 1,000 cubic meters. The Gazprom units resold the gas to Gazprom's German subsidiary, ZMB GmbH, for $180 at the Belarussian border. That company delivered the fuel to Germany and sold it to Tancredo for $213, after which Gazprom Export took a $1 agent's fee to sell the gas for $259.
Thus, Tancredo was earning about $46 per 1,000 cubic meters. For comparison, Gazprom's average price in 2007 was $51 per 1,000 cubic meters in Russia, and $269 in Europe.
It is unclear how much gas was sold under the scheme. In December 2008, Gazprom was planning to spend nearly 89 billion rubles, or about $3 billion now, over the following three years to buy gas from Tancredo in Germany.
Unlike in 2002, however, the "streamlining" of exports is being conducted by Gazprom Export chief Alexander Medvedev, not a special commission of auditors, a Gazprom manager said. Another source in the company said Gazprom managers were not expecting any shocking decisions.
So far, it has been decided only to liquidate ZMB, which in 2009 was merged with its parent company, Gazprom Germania, the second source said. Besides, almost all of the companies that buy Gazprom's gas in Europe are formally intermediaries. Germany's E.On resells fuel in Germany, Austria, Hungary and other countries.
Medvedev is also unlikely to leave, the two sources close to Gazprom's management said.
Vedomosti was unable to reach Medvedev for comment. A spokesperson for Gazprombank declined comment.
Throughout the European Union, Gazprom's gas is purchased by traders, including some in which Gazprom has a stake, such as Hungary's Panrusgaz (in which Gazprom has 40 percent) and Bulgaria's Overgas (in which it has 50 percent). The best-known intermediary in recent years was the Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo, which was cut out of the gas trade last year but has yet to be liquidated.
Itar-Tass: Gazprom to earmark RUR 2 bln more for gas supply of Altai Rep
05.03.2010, 11.01
GORNO-ALTAISK, March 5 (Itar-Tass) -- Gazprom will allocate another 1.9 billion rubles for gas supply of the Altai Republic in 2010-2014. A total of 1.1 billion rubles were earmarked for these purposes in 2007-2009. An agreement on this issue was reached at a working meeting of Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and head of the Altai Republic Alexander Berdnikov held in Moscow on Thursday, ITAR-TASS learnt at the press service of the republican government in Gorno-Altaisk.
Thus Gazprom will allocate around three billion rubles to implement the program of gas supply of the Altai Republic. During the meeting, the sides discussed the pace of fulfillment of the agreement on cooperation between Gazprom and the government of the Altai Republic. As the meeting participants noted, in 2009 the program of gas supply of the region was implemented successfully. Inter-settlement and distribution gas pipelines were built in Gorno-Altaisk and Maima, the 21st municipal boiler-house was prepared for working on gas and linking up of several hundred private house-holdings with gas networks began.
In 2009, Gazprom allocated gratis 500 million rubles for the construction of inter-settlement and distribution networks. According to the results of the meeting between Miller and Berdnikov, an agreement was reached to continue the gas supply program until 2014. In 2011-2014, the state company will continue financing the construction of gas distribution networks in Gorno-Altaisk and Altai rural areas adjacent to it. A total of three billion rubles are to be allocated for these purposes.
At present, the average level of gas supply of the region amounts to less than one percent. On the average in Russia, this index is equal to 63.2 percent.
Reuters: EU gas glut forces Gazprom into Asia –analysts
Thu Mar 4, 2010 9:33pm IST
* Europe hardest hit by global gas glut
* Asian gas market provides diversification
* Potential to monetize remote East Siberian gas
LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - Russia may have to boost gas sales to Asia in the short to medium term because of stiff competition and sagging prices in Europe, according to a new study by consultants Wood Mackenzie published on Thursday.
The global gas glut and lower demand in Europe, which for decades has gobbled up most Russian gas exports, likely means European gas market prices will remain low until the second half of the decade, hitting its oil-indexed sales hard.
"Our analysis shows that while the interdependency between Europe and Russia will continue, Europe has been hardest hit by the global gas glut," Tim Lambert, vice president energy consulting for Wood Mackenzie, said.
"The Asian gas market is potentially very attractive for Russia as it provides diversification and the potential to monetize large quantities of remote East Siberian gas."
Gazprom's deputy chief executive told Reuters in January the company hoped to deliver gas to energy-hungry China from 2015. [ID:nLDE60K1EK]
Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom has in the last few weeks offered to sell some of its biggest European customers fuel at European spot market prices in a move to defend its shrinking market share. [ID:nLDE6220SG]
Wood Mackenzie believes Russia's sales may suffer from Europe's alternative sources of supply through increased imports of LNG and pipeline gas from North Africa and Central Asia in the latter part of this decade.
But in the longer term European demand for Russian gas should rise from around 26 percent of the European market currently to over 29 percent by 2020 and 30 percent by 2030, Lambert said.
LNG OUTLOOK
While the Russian pipeline gas giant's European market share has been nibbled at by large deliveries of LNG over the last year, Gazprom's own LNG export business is also under threat from competing unconventional gas supplies in the United States, the Edinburgh-based energy consultancy says.
"Gazprom's ambitions to grow a major business in North America based on LNG imports from Russia now face considerable challenges," the report says.
"The long-term pricing environment is unlikely to be sufficient to support the economic development of high cost projects such as Shtokman LNG and Yamal LNG."
Last month Russia delayed the start of its giant Arctic Shtokman gas field by three years to 2016, largely because of the surge in North American shale gas output dampened its export prospects. [ID:nLDE6141ZH]
For an analysis on Russia's LNG prospects click here: [ID:nN10151291] (Reporting by Daniel Fineren; editing by Sue Thomas)
EasyBourse: Fitch Upgrades Gazprom International's Notes To 'A-'; Outlook Stable
Fitch Ratings-Paris/London-04 March 2010: Fitch Ratings has today upgraded the rating of the USD798m notes issued by Gazprom International S.A. (Gazprom) to 'A-' from 'BBB+'. The Outlook on the rating is Stable.
The notes are backed by export receivables due to OAO Gazprom from long-term gas delivery contracts with two European importers (ENI Spa, rated 'AA-'/'F1+'/Outlook Stable, and GasTerra, respectively) located in Italy and the Netherlands.
Both importers purchase gas from Gazprom, and settle their payments through collection accounts that form the transaction collateral.
The upgrade of the notes' rating follows Fitch's affirmation of OAO Gazprom's Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB' on 22 January 2010, and a revision of the company's Outlook to Stable from Negative. (For further information, please see the 22 January comment, entitled 'Fitch Takes Rating Actions on 6 Russian Corporates on Sovereign Outlook Revision', which is available at .) The upgrade of the notes further reflects the update of the agency's criteria for the treatment of future flow transactions in emerging markets (For further information, see the 4 March 2010 report, entitled 'Future Flow Securitization in Emerging Markets', available at .)
OAO Gazprom has been assigned a Going Concern Score of GC2. Under the revised future flow transactions criteria, a GC2 score is consistent with a possible uplift of up to three notches above the originator's rating if the originator's Long-term IDR is investment grade. In Fitch's view, the historical performance, current debt service coverage ratios (DSCRs), and structural features of Gazprom International's notes are consistent with a two notch uplift above OAO Gazprom's Long-term IDR of 'BBB'.
Gas flows dropped in 2009 due to the volatile global economic environment, which affected both volumes and prices. Despite the fall in six month and 12 month DSCRs to 14.1x and 14.0x in November 2009, from 22.8x and 21.6x in November 2008, respectively, Fitch continues to regard the flows as adequate.
The transaction does suffer from a certain element of delivery risk, relying on pipelines through both Ukraine and Belarus to deliver gas which, as seen in 2009, can result in temporary interruptions to the flows. This risk is somewhat mitigated by Gazprom's large gas storage facilities across Europe and by the strategic importance to the pipeline countries of the continued gas transit.
Applicable criteria, 'Future Flow Securitization in Emerging Markets', dated 4 March, 2010 are available at .
Publié le 04 mars 2010 Copyright © 2010 Dowjones
Business Insider: Gazprom Has Finally Accepted That Shale Gas Is About To Change The World
Joe Weisenthal | Mar. 4, 2010, 11:46 AM | 1,435 |
The Russian gas giant this week said it will allow up to 15% of its gas sales to Europe to be sold at spot gas prices on the continent.
This is a big shift for Gazprom. Previously, the major insisted on selling gas to European users under long-term contracts. With gas prices linked to prevailing oil prices.
It's long been usual practice in Europe to sell gas using an oil-linked price structure. Decades ago, when gas was just coming into widespread use, players in the industry decided that the fuel should be priced according to value of the other fuels it was displacing. If users were switching from oil to gas, the gas should cost roughly as much as the unused oil, on an energy-content basis.
This cost structure prevailed in Europe for a long time. But shale gas seems to have cut the legs out from under oily gas prices.
With America now producing above and beyond expectations thanks to shale gas development, gas exporters globally are scrambling to find markets. The world built liquefied natural gas plants thinking the U.S. would be the "market of last resort".
But America is awash in its own production, and the high American prices that exporters were hoping for have vanished. Meaning that today there is a fleet of LNG ships looking for a home for their product.
This flood of global gas supply has depressed spot gas prices globally. To the point where the traditional 6 to 1 oil to gas price ratio has become more like 15 to 1. Gas is very cheap compared to crude.
The result being that European gas users would rather buy cheap LNG than pay high rates for oil-linked gas piped in by Gazprom.
Gazprom resisted re-pricing its gas for some time. But this week's announcement suggests the company has finally capitulated. They are willing to sell some of their gas at lower, spot prices. Otherwise they will be largely priced out of the European market.
The interesting thing will be the knock-on effects of Gazprom's decision. Suddenly, a lot of Russian gas is price-competitive with LNG. Meaning that fewer LNG shipments will be ordered to the continent.
The question is: where will these boats go? They may end up headed back to America. Asian gas buyers are busy sewing up contracts with new LNG developments in Australia. If Europe and Asia are out, the U.S. is the only game in town.
A spate of new LNG landings in the U.S. would have a downward effect on North American gas prices. At a time when prices in many parts of America are already falling below $5 per mcf. Just this week, gas major EnCana said it expects North American prices to remain in the $6 range for the foreseeable future.
This is progress. The gas industry did a great job over the last several years of developing new supply globally. Now we just have to find a place to put it all.
Dave Forest
dforest@
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