russia - wikileaks · web viewcri.cn: chinese vp meets putin, stresses friendship, co-op cctv:...
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Russia 100324
Basic Political Developments Reuters: Ukraine PM seeks broad span of Russia agreements - "Tomorrow I will
fly to Moscow to meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to discuss the themes and content of these possible agreements," he said. Analysts say Yanukovich, seen to have closer ties with Moscow than his predecessor, could seek to solve a number of issues including gas prices and a gas consortium, loans and the fate of the Russian Black Sea fleet, in one package.
CRI.cn: Chinese VP Meets Putin, Stresses Friendship, Co-op CCTV: China, Russia pledge closer cooperation Itar-Tass: Xi Jinping, Medvedev to discuss strategic partnership Moscow Times/Reuters: China’s Heir-Apparent Offers Alliance - “Xi Jinping is
considered to be one of the candidates to replace Hu Jintao so it is a very important visit, to get acquainted with him and to understand the aims of the man who could be the next ruler of China,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs.
Moscow Times: VTB’s China Loan Grows - The Export-Import Bank of China increased its credit line to state-run VTB Group, the country’s second-biggest lender, to $800 million from $500 million, VTB said Tuesday. The money can be borrowed in Chinese yuan or in “fully convertible” currencies, VTB said.
RBC: Vnesheconombank takes out loan from China Hamsayeh: Russia and China Support a Multi-Polar World - We are in favor of
Russia playing an important role in international and regional affairs and to achieve that we will surely support you.
Press TV: China seeks Russia alliance to counter US dominance - The visit by the Russian official comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to put the rivalries of the Cold War behind them and rise as counterweights to the global dominance of the US.
RIA: Russia conducts Navy anti-submarine drills in Sea of Japan Voice of Russia: Russia holds its first anti-radiation exercises - Russia has
launched its first radiation emergency exercises in the Far East. The two-day exercises will involve experts and rescue workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Migration Service of Russia. The aim of the exercises is to assess the country’s ability to protect its people in case of a radiation threat.
Itar-Tass: Somali pirates expanding area of operations - Somali pirates have apparently expanded a geographic area of their operations, as suggested by the reports on their seizure of a Turkish dry cargo ship at a distance of about a thousand nautical miles /1,820 kilometers/ away from the African coast.
RIA: Russian, Qatari premiers to talk energy investment KUNA: Qatari-Russian talks to tackle bilateral cooperation, reign''s situation -
Talks will touch on boosting cooperation between security bodies to counter terror alongside other challenges, adding that Qatari Prime Minister will discuss cooperation in the fields of peaceful use of nuclear energy, economy, investments, and satellite communications with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
News.am: Moscow and London discussed CIS, South Caucasus situation - Russian Deputy FMs Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin met with UK Foreign Office political Director Geoffrey Adams.
Itar-Tass: Int'l fuel and energy forum to open in St Petersburg - Effectuation of strategic development tasks in the fuel and energy sector is the highlight of the agenda of the St Petersburg International Fuel and Energy Forum 2010 that opens here Wednesday.
BarentsObserver: National security challenged by Arctic climate change - Talking to newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Yuri Averyanov, one of the leaders in the Security Council administration, maintains that Russia in 10-15 years will face serious trouble in its Arctic territories because of the melting permafrost.
Viet Nam News: President seeks stronger defence ties with Russia Reuters: Russia, China push Iran to change nuclear stance Reuters: Russia, China urged Iran to change nuclear stance RIA: Russian drug chief to announce new plan against Afghan drug threat - "In
particular, Russia's proposals will include plans of eliminating opium plantations in Afghanistan, exchange of operative data with NATO members, including on location of drug laboratories and deliveries of precursors," the source told RIA Novosti.
Itar-Tass: Russian-NATO Council to discuss drugs production in Afghanistan - Viktor Ivanov, the director of the Russian Federal Service for Control over the Circulation of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances /Rosnarkokontrol/ has arrived in Brussels to attend the meeting.
Moscow Times: Russia's UN Envoy Presses NATO on Poppies - Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin made clear to the UN Security Council that Moscow was concerned about the reported "intention of ISAF [NATO] in Afghanistan to give up on destroying the poppy fields, including in those territories that have been liberated from Taliban."
Russia Today: Horrific tale of Afghan family addiction a sad metaphor for casualties of war
Prague Monitor: Obama wants new START treaty to be signed in Prague - U.S. President Barack Obama would like to sign the U.S.-Russian START treaty on nuclear arms reduction with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Prague, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes today, referring to several reliable diplomatic sources.
Thenews. pl: Polish president invited to Moscow for WW II ceremony Balkans.com: Bulgaria: Atomstroyexport with up to 80% share in NPP Belen Focus: Interior Ministry uncovers scheme for funds draining from NPP Belene -
The report defines Gazprom’s offer to become a shareholder as “suspicious” and states Russian Atomstroyexport was chosen to implement the project in a mock tender. So far, a total of EUR 1 billion has been invested in the project, with payments for consultants and Atomstroyexport being EUR 430, 4 million, the report reads.
Google search: Kazakh, Russian Vice PMs to hold working meeting - First vice prime ministers of Kazakhstan and Russia Umirzak Shukeyev and Igor Shuvalov are expected to meet in Moscow today
Messenger: Are Georgia and Russia talking in secret? - Leader of the Parliamentary minority Christian Democratic Movement (CDM), Giorgi Targamadze, stated at the Parliamentary session on March 23 that secret negotiations might be going on between the Georgian and Russian authorities. He said that suspicions have been sparked by reports that Russia is about to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Expert Club: Moscow is preparing a military agreement with Tskhinvali Expert Club: Bagapsh and Kokoity will have to share with Russian Ministry of
Regional Development Expert Club: Shevchenko promised to help "Daryal" - The Public Chamber of
Russia wants to change system of crossing of the Russian-Georgian border. Member of the Chamber Maxim Shevchenko promised residents of border areas to achieve simplification of crossing system through the Kazbegi - Upper Larsi checkpoint.
Messenger: IPRM meeting in Gali ends with no results - As expected the fourteenth round of incidents prevention and response mechanism meetings in Gali between the Georgian and the de facto Abkhazian authorities ended with no result on Tuesday.
Georgian Daily: Russian Customs Union May Undermine Georgia Embargo - “Georgian products may return to Russia via Belarus and Kazakhstan” when trade borders are removed within the customs union on July 1, Saakashvili’s spokeswoman Manana Manjgaladze told reporters in the capital Tbilisi today, citing the president.
Financial Times: UC Rusal reprieve in Guinea battle - Oleg Deripaska's UC Rusal said yesterday it had won a reprieve in its legal battle with Guinea over ownership of the Friguia alumina refinery. But Guinea's mining minister, Mahmoud Thiam, said he was not aware of the ruling and intended to pursue a claim for compensation. "Even if they won an appeal giving them back the shares, it does not negate the fact that they owe us in excess of $900m," he said.
Shephard.co.uk: Russia displays civil and military helicopters in Chile Moscow Times: Sheremetyevo Terminal Date - Sheremetyevo International
Airport will open its new Terminal E on March 29 RIA: Russian region doubles "car scrapping premium" - The government of
Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Region on the Volga has doubled the premium paid to users of old cars who agree to have their car scrapped in line with a new disposal scheme, the governor's press service said.
Interfax: Russia devising new police law – interior minister: "Upon analyzing all the existing problems, a decision supported by the country's leadership has been made on developing a new law on police, which would be new in its spirit. This should be a universal and socially-oriented legal act, whose main principle will be the protection of our citizens' rights and freedoms," Nurgaliyev said on Police Wave radio on Wednesday.
Itar-Tass: Minister offers public to take part in preparing new law on police Russia-IC: False bomb alarm stopped functioning of Yakutsk airport RIA: Moscow to pay last respects to chief firefighter
Moscow Times: New Grain Producer Lobby - Grain producers from 32 regions formed a new body to lobby for policies favorable to farmers, Siberian Agrarian Holding chairman Pavel Skurikhin said Tuesday at its first meeting.
Moscow Times: Vekselberg to Oversee Russia’s Silicon Valley Moscow Times: Why Putin Isn’t Afraid of a Free Internet - During 10 years of
Vladimir Putin’s rule, Russia collected more than $1.5 trillion selling oil and gas but didn’t build a single kilometer of new highway. In the same period, China built 5,000 to 6,000 kilometers of highways every year… Russia’s equivalent to the Chinese peasant is the archetypal Vanya the tractor driver. Vanya has been drinking for the past 30 years and uses his tractor mainly to get to the local store to buy another bottle of vodka, not to work his plot of land. In contrast, the typical Chinese peasant is prepared to work, eat and sleep at the factory for five years straight to save up a few thousand dollars to open his own little kiosk selling fruit or other goods. Vanya the tractor driver will never vote for a liberal opposition candidate, nor will he take part in a protest or rebellion. Deep in his soul, he understands that he doesn’t deserve anything more in life than his beloved bottle of vodka.
Spero News: 'You Wrote Nasty Things About Putin' - "It's definitely flattering for a journalist to be so hated, but I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to interview Churov. I was really looking forward to asking him why he came into the office in overall hunting fatigues the week before the election."
Moscow Times: Human Rights Activists Seek Western Protection - “Our people are being killed and injured and none of us knows who will be next,” veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva told a European Union conference in Moscow.
Moscow Times: Luzhkov's Powerful Deputy Caught in Corruption Probe True/Slant: Hillary Clinton talks with the Russian Larry King Executive Intelligence Review: London's 'Our Men' in Moscow Keep Poisoning
Russian Policy - Some of the members of the Gaidar-Chubais team had earlier departed to the private sector, joining the ranks of would-be "irreversible" private-property owners, some of them on an obscenely huge scale. Others, however, filtered into the institutions of Russian policy-making and continued to hold key positions throughout the first decade of the new century, even as President Vladimir Putin sought to regroup the Russian economy and shift it away from its addiction to raw materials exports.
Chatham House: Russia and the Arctic: Parachuting In - Russia's armed forces are expected to try to seize international headlines in the coming weeks by dropping a team of specially trained parachutists over theNorth Pole. Moscow claims to be 'peacefully' commemorating the first airborne landing there made by two Soviet scientists, Vitaly Volovich and Andrei Medvedev, in May 1949. But much more is at stake: questions of power and energy.
Russia Today: Principled childless gain ground in Russia - Modeled after an American idea, Russia's online Childfree Community has thousands of members. Of different ages and sexes, they are brought together by their rebellion against social norms. They can have children, but simply do not want to.
Earthtimes: Russia!: Former Intelligence Operative Builds $150,000 Stereo Systems Out of His Basement
Russia Today: 24 March, 2010 in Russian Newspaperso Trud: Brain-drain has been reversed - High-tech specialists are returning
to Russia from the United States and Europeo Ivestiya: Marxism - “Crisis-ism” o Nezavisimaya: A special group has been created in Tbilisi to fight against
Saakashvili Reuters: PRESS DIGEST - Russia - March 24
o KOMMERSANTo Ukraine is in talks with Russia's Gazprom (GAZP.MM) to lower the price
it pays for gas imports to $180 per cubic metre, the daily reports.o Russia's economy ministry plans to introduce 5 percent export duty for
potash in 2010, the paper writes.o VEDOMOSTIo A popular game on a Russian social networking website has made profit
of $20 million in one year, the paper says.o The paper runs an interview with the chief Executive Officer of Alcatel-
Lucent, Ben Verwaayen.o TNK-BP (TNBPI.RTS) aims to sell the Kovykta gas field to Rosneftegaz,
a state holding company with stakes in oil sector leader Rosneft and gas export monopoly Gazprom, for $700-900 million, the paper says.
o GAZETAo The government of Moscow has abandoned the idea of decorating the city
with posters of Joseph Stalin for the 65th anniversary of victory in World War Two, the daily reports.
o VREMYA NOVOSTEIo Russia's government will consider lowering duties on imported cars to 25
from 30 percent, the paper writes. o KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDAo Russia will spend 13 billion roubles ($440.4 million) to support small
businesses in 2010, the paper writes. o Moscow Times: Today in Vedomostio Law Sees Compensation for Legal Bureaucracy o 'The Happy Farmer' Reaps Rewards o Google Calls Off Search in China
Barentsnova: Sunday, Russia goes an hour ahead - Sunday, March 28 Russian clocks are an hour advanced for daylight time saving.
Itar-Tass: Around 200 settlements under threat of floods in southern Russia
National Economic Trends
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions Reuters: Russian markets -- Factors to watch on March 24
o OTP Bank: Decline in crude prices and negative sentiment on Asian bourses might influence trading after Russian markets open.
o Veles Capital: "There are no serious suppositions for growth ... and on contrary the technical factors are speaking for some dropping."
o EVENTS (All times GMT):o MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meets Qatari
counterpart Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani. 1200.o MOSCOW - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meets Qatari
counterpart Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani. 0700.o MOSCOW - Cabinet presidium meeting. 1500.o MOSCOW - The Finance Ministry to offer 12.2 billion roubles of 2012
OFZ bonds at a top-up auction. o IN THE PAPERS:o Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg has been nominated by President
Dmitry Medvedev to head the creation of the Skolkovo innovation centre - the Kremlin's ambition to diversify the country's economy away from oil and gas, the business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
o Vekselberg is the head of the investment Renova holding and a TNK-BP shareholder. Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service, following a request from Russian banks, will examine whether the central bank's recommendation to lower deposit rates does not violate the law on competitiveness, the daily Vedomosti reported.
o TOP STORIES IN RUSSIA AND THE CIS:o TOP NEWS: o COMPANIES/MARKETS: o Wimm-Bill-Dann promises progressive dividends o Russian Railways to sell 7yr benchmark Eurobondo ECONOMY/POLITICS: o Rouble recovery too modest for new peaks o Putin pledges support to Russia small business o Cold Russian winter to blame for weak data o C.bank provisions tightening positive-Moody's o ENERGY: o Ukraine govt draws blank in first gas talkso LUKOIL CEO says Conoco confirms share sale o TNK-BP co-owner eyes Kovykta for $700-900 mln OGK-3 to boost
investment, may pay dividend o COMMODITIES:o Petropavlovsk seals China for iron projects o Russia mulls 5 pct potash export duty o Grain producers form a new industry lobby
Bloomberg: OAO Lukoil, OAO Rosneft, Polyus Gold: Russian Equity Preview Bloomberg: PIK Group May Sell $500 Million of Shares, Kommersant Reports Moscow Times: Energy Ministry Reduces 2015 Power Forecast
Moscow Times: For the Record o The government will control about 54 percent of Rostelecom after
regional telecoms are merged into the telecommunications holding, Kommersant reported Tuesday, without saying where it got the information. (Bloomberg)
o Russian oil producers will spend 1.5 trillion rubles ($50 billion) to upgrade and build refineries in the next five years, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
o The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service approved the transfer of some Rosavia assets to Aeroflot, but it has not received an application for the rest of the assets, the watchdog’s head, Igor Artemyev, said Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
o Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema won regulatory approval to buy 49 percent of oil producer Russneft, said Igor Artemyev, head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service. (Bloomberg)
BarentsObserver: New apatite mine opens in 2012 Tyrepress: Foundation Stone Laid at Yokohama’s Russian Plant Itar-Tass: GAZ Group plans to bring three new GAZelle models to market in
April-August
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory) RBC: Russia not to cut oil exports before 2025 Steel Guru: Oil companies could pump RUB 1.5 trillion into refining by 2015 -
Mr Sechin Steel Guru: Russia boosts natural gas exports by 63pct 2 months Oil and Gas Eurasia: FAS Begins Applying New Oil Products Formula Reuters: Ukraine govt draws blank in first Russia gas talks Moscow Times: Firtash Allies at Naftogaz Financial Times: TNK-BP poisedto sell Kovykta gas field Telegraph: TNK-BP to sell key gas field to Russia after 10-year battle Interfax: Lukoil awaits two events on March 24 that could affect share prices -
Lukoil will post a net profit of $2.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 2009 under US GAAP, according to the consensus forecast of 17 banks and investment companies compiled by Interfax. Lukoil posted a net loss of $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. Net profit for the full year will total $7.4 billion, according to the forecast, 19% less than in 2008.
Financial Times: Conoco to halve stake in Lukoil Reuters: Russia's Sistema cleared to buy Russneft stake Irish Times: Petroneft 'ahead of schedule' Rigzone: PetroNeft Spuds Ahead of Schedule at Lineynoye Field OilPrice: Fate of foreign oil investors in limbo amid Ghana - Côte d’Ivoire border
dispute - Earlier this month, Côte d’Ivoire appealed to the United Nations to delineate its offshore border with Ghana, a bid seen as controversial since Russia’s Lukoil discovered oil reserves only days before off Ghana’s coast. Ghana’s Jubilee field will also begin operations later this year and give the country commercial oil-producer status.
Russia Today: Technology key to boosting Russian crude production and energy efficiency - Russia Today: Technology key to boosting Russian crude production and energy efficiency
Gazprom Ukrainian News: Gazprom Complains Of Naftohaz Ukrainy's Taking Less Gas
Than Expected In First Quarter Energy Intelligence: Gazprom Spuds 3rd India Well Oil and Gas Eurasia: Uralmash Wins Gazprom neft Rig Tender
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Full Text Articles
Basic Political Developments
Reuters: Ukraine PM seeks broad span of Russia agreementshttp://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE62N0GA20100324
Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:41am GMT
KIEV, March 24 (Reuters) - Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov will discuss a broad spectrum of agreements with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, when he visits on Thursday, the second trip to Moscow by Ukrainian officials in a week. A Ukrainian delegation returned from Moscow on Tuesday evening after beginning talks on a gas supply deal with Russia which new President Viktor Yanukovich says burdens Ukraine with too expensive prices for the commodity. "The government is beginning to prepare a broad spectrum of bilateral agreements," Azarov told journalists on Wednesday.
"Tomorrow I will fly to Moscow to meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to discuss the themes and content of these possible agreements," he said. Analysts say Yanukovich, seen to have closer ties with Moscow than his predecessor, could seek to solve a number of issues including gas prices and a gas consortium, loans and the fate of the Russian Black Sea fleet, in one package. (Reporting by Yuri Kulikov; Writing by Sabina Zawadzki)
CRI.cn: Chinese VP Meets Putin, Stresses Friendship, Co-ophttp://english.cri.cn/6909/2010/03/24/2001s558859.htm
2010-03-24 12:30:29 Xinhua Web Editor: Qin Mei
Visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping reiterated China's wish for closer cooperation with Russia during his meetings with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov and leaders of the ruling United Russia party Tuesday.
The Sino-Russian relations have always been a priority of China's foreign policy. To boost a sound and stable development of the Sino-Russian strategic cooperative partnership has been an established guideline of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government, Xi said.
China stands ready to step up mutual support on issues concerning both sides' core and strategic interests, exploit complementary advantages, jointly promote a multi-polar world and the democratization of international relations and elevate bilateral ties to a new stage, he said.
Xi expressed the hope that the two countries will further coordination on economic development, deepen energy cooperation and improve the quality and level of economic and trade cooperation.
He called for further implementation of the consensus on interregional cooperation reached by the two countries' leaders, and increased people-to-people exchanges against the backdrop of the "Year of the Chinese Language" in Russia this year.
As for inter-party cooperation, Xi, who is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC, said cooperation between the CPC and Russia's ruling United Russia party has been enriched continuously since they forged ties 11 years ago.
Xi expected the two parties to make use of high-level dialogue and exchange governing experience and views on major issues on bilateral cooperation.
Putin said the Russian government and the United Russia party highly value their relations with China and the CPC.
He spoke highly of the "Year of the Russian Language" in China and the "Year of the Chinese Language" in Russia, adding that the inter-party exchanges served as an important platform for deepening the Russia-China strategic cooperative partnership.
Russia is willing to intensify strategic coordination with China and push forward bilateral relations, Putin said.
Following the meeting, Xi attended the signing ceremony for a series of documents on bilateral cooperation on economy, technology, and people-to-people exchanges. The total value of the signed business agreements is worth about 6.7 billion U.S. dollars.
On Tuesday evening, Xi and Putin also attended the opening ceremony of the "Year of the Chinese Language," a reciprocal event to last year's "Year of the Russian Language" in China.
An assortment of activities are scheduled for the event, including seminars, educational exhibitions, Chinese language and literature contests and interaction between teachers and university students, as well as movie, music and other cultural festivals.
While meeting with Boris Gryzlov, speaker of Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, the Chinese vice president said the Chinese National People's Congress is ready to deepen exchanges with the State Duma and lay a solid legal foundation for bilateral cooperation in various fields.
Gryzlov, for his part, said Russia-China relations and the friendship between the two peoples had reached an unprecedented high in recent years.
He said a long-term strategic cooperative partnership with China was a priority for Russian foreign policy and the friendly policy toward China had been supported by all parties represented in the parliament.
Gryzlov expressed hope that the State Duma could strengthen exchanges and cooperation with China's National People's Congress and the Communist Party of China, exchange governance experience, boost pragmatic economic and trade cooperation, and push forward bilateral relations.
Delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the second round of strategic dialogue between the Chinese and Russian ruling parties, the Chinese leader said that relations between Chinese and Russian ruling parties are indispensable to the Chinese-Russian strategic cooperative partnership.
In recent years, the Communist Party of China and the United Russia party have set up a mechanism of all-round and multi-layer exchanges and formed a relationship of strategic cooperation. The two parties have played an increasingly important and unique role in promoting bilateral ties, Xi said.
The second round of Sino-Russian inter-party strategic dialogue, under the theme of "Chinese and Russian ruling parties' responsibility in post-crisis era," is of vital practical significance for the two parties to strengthen capacity building, enrich the exchange mechanism, and further enhance inter-party strategic cooperation, he said.
Putin, chairman of the United Russia, said in a statement that the exchanges and cooperation between the United Russia and the CPC have reached a new level in recent years. The inter-party dialogue fully demonstrates a highly responsible attitude from both parties to seek the well-being of the peoples of the two countries.
Xi, who arrived in Russia on Saturday, is on a four-nation European tour which will also take him to Belarus, Finland and Sweden.
CCTV: China, Russia pledge closer cooperationhttp://english.cctv.com/program/newshour/20100324/102594.shtml
2010-03-24 13:27 BJT
Special Report: Xi Jinping Visits 4 European Nations
Visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping has met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The two leaders agreed to enhance ties between their countries and their ruling parties.
At Tuesday's meeting, Vice-President Xi Jinping first conveyed sincere greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to the Russian leader.
He said Sino-Russian relations have always been a priority of China's foreign policy. And boosting a sound development of their partnership is an established guideline of the Chinese government.
Xi Jinping said China stands ready to step up mutual support on issues concerning both sides' core interests, exploit complementary advantages, jointly promote a multi-polar world and elevate bilateral ties to a new stage.
Itar-Tass: Xi Jinping, Medvedev to discuss strategic partnership
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14948666&PageNum=0
24.03.2010, 08.13
MOSCOW, March 24 (Itar-Tass) - Visiting China’s Vice-President Xi Jinping on Wednesday will meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
“Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia opens the Russian-Chinese political dialogue this year,” the Kremlin press service said. “It is expected that during his meeting with the Russian president, Xi Jinping will discuss a wide range of issues of strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing, which has recently been on the rise and has reached an unprecedented level.”
“Strategic partnership between Russia and China has in many respects been promoted by the mechanism of extensive top-level dialogue,” the press service reminded. “The year 2009 saw five summit meetings between heads of the two countries. Moscow’s and Beijing’s join efforts help consolidate the material base of bilateral relations, expand humanitarian cooperation, which in general strengthens friendship and mutual understanding between the Russian and Chinese peoples, enhances the social base of the Russian-Chinese relations.”
Born in 1953, Xi Jinping is one of China’s youngest and most promising political figures. In 2007, he became one of Chinese Communist party leaders. Since March 2008, he has been China’s vice-president. He is also rector of the Party School under the Communist party’s central committee.
Xi Jinping and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday attended an opening ceremony of the Year of the Chinese Language in Russia. The program of festivities includes more than 80 events, including conferences, exhibitions, contests, student exchanges, tours of Chinese theatrical companies and performers, etc.
The Year of the Chinese Language in Russia followed the Year of the Russian Language in China in 2009, which included more than 200 events involving thousands of students from China’s 103 higher educational establishments.
Moscow Times: China’s Heir-Apparent Offers Alliance http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/chinas-heir-apparent-offers-alliance/402437.html
24 March 2010ReutersThe man widely seen as China’s next leader told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that the world’s two most powerful emerging market economies should help each other increase their weight in global affairs.
China and Russia say their trade and political relations are better than ever, although senior Russian officials are privately concerned about an increasingly assertive China along Moscow’s vast and largely empty southeastern border.
Vice President Xi Jinping, seen as the frontrunner to succeed President Hu Jintao in 2013, told Putin that Beijing wanted the power of key developing nations to be recognized.
“We consider that in the process of the deep transformation of the world order, the interests of China, Russia and other developing countries must be taken fully into account,” Xi said.
“Russia and China must become strategic props for each other in the future on all questions which have a strategic interest for Russia,” he told Putin at the start of talks in Moscow.
Analysts said the visit to Russia — which will include a meeting on Wednesday with President Dmitry Medvedev — was aimed to acquaint Russia’s leaders with a potential successor to Hu.
“Xi Jinping is considered to be one of the candidates to replace Hu Jintao so it is a very important visit, to get acquainted with him and to understand the aims of the man who
could be the next ruler of China,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs.
Russia has called for the group of emerging market powers known as BRIC — which also includes Brazil, India and China — to be given more say in world affairs, though China’s economy is bigger than the other three together.
China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, has in recent years sought to secure long-term oil and gas supplies from Russia, the world’s biggest energy producer.
China’s economy grew by about 8.5 percent to $4.76 trillion last year, while Russia’s economy shrank 7.5 percent to $1.25 trillion after a 10-year economic boom, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Russia is a keen buyer of Chinese manufactured goods, though Moscow is worried that its former Soviet role as a supplier of technology and arms to Beijing has largely vanished as China’s own industries overtake Russia’s.
Russia also sees China as an important partner in efforts to limit the influence of the United States on issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to reducing reliance on the dollar.
“We have always supported China on the most sensitive questions, including on the problem of Taiwan,” Putin said.
Moscow Times: VTB’s China Loan Grows http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/vtbs-china-loan-grows/402428.html
24 March 2010
The Export-Import Bank of China increased its credit line to state-run VTB Group, the country’s second-biggest lender, to $800 million from $500 million, VTB said Tuesday.
The money can be borrowed in Chinese yuan or in “fully convertible” currencies, VTB said.
(Bloomberg)
RBC: Vnesheconombank takes out loan from China
http://top.rbc.ru/english/index.shtml?/news/english/2010/03/23/23183919_bod.shtml
23/03/2010
The China Development Bank will open a credit line of $1bn to the Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs State Corporation (Vnesheconombank), the
Russian bank’s press office reported today. The funds will be extended under a framework agreement between Vnesheconombank and the China Development Bank signed during the recent working visit of China’s Vice President Xi Jinping to Russia.
Vnesheconombank plans to use the money to fund investment projects within Russia. At the moment, a wide range of Russian investment projects are being co-sponsored by the China Development Bank, including the construction of a cement plant in Slantsy, Leningrad region.
Founded in 1994, the China Development Bank is the nation’s state-run financial institution. Its counteragent, the Russian state corporation, was set up in 2007. Vnesheconombank is one of the key vehicles of Russia’s national investment policy. It focuses on overcoming infrastructural growth limitations, upgrading and developing non-primary and high-tech industries, encouraging innovation, boosting high-tech exports, carrying out projects in special economic zones, as well as environmental projects, and supporting small and medium-sized businesses.
Hamsayeh: Russia and China Support a Multi-Polar Worldhttp://www.hamsayeh.net/hamsayehnet_iran-international%20news1054.htm
We are in favor of Russia playing an important role in international and regional affairs and to achieve that we will surely support you. March 24, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin met Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping during official visit to Beijing this week. Following his talks with Chinese official Putin said his country seeks China’s help and support for Russia’s future plan of playing a more active role in global affairs. Putin said he considers China as a truly strategic partner to counter a unilateral trend normally practiced by others. ‘China is a strategic partner in the full sense of the world, and we have always supported China on the most sensitive issues, including the Taiwan problem,’ Putin said. The issue surrounding Taiwan has been brought to world’s attention recently when the United States signed a country-to-country military contract worth over 6 billion euro with the island earlier. China considers Taiwan as an integral part of its territory and the signing of the contract between the US and Taiwan has strained relationship with Washington. The Chinese Vice President Xi also reiterated his support for a multi-polar world saying China and Russia should in the future facilitate the establishment of a multi-polar world and democratization of international relations. The Chinese Vice President added, ‘We
are in favor of Russia playing an important role in international and regional affairs and to achieve that we will surely support you.’ The United States is also at loggerheads with Moscow on several important points. One of the most pressing problems for Moscow is the NATO’s ever-growing expansion close to Russia’s borders. The US has established military basis all around the country, thus enabling Washington to exert political pressures on Moscow from all directions.
Press TV: China seeks Russia alliance to counter US dominancehttp://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=121532§ionid=351020404
Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:39:07 GMTLooking to form a counterbalance to the power of the US, Beijing called on Moscow, as one of the emerging market economies, to enter into an alliance with China seeking to increase their leverage in global affairs.
Speaking after talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping hailed the strength of bilateral ties with Russia as a success and went on to express the Beijing government's support for Russia's growing power on the global stage.
"We are in favor of Russia playing an important role in international and regional affairs," Xi said, stressing that "we will surely support you."
"In our opinion, China and Russia should in the future facilitate the establishment of a multi-polar world and democratization of international relations," the Chinese official added.
The visit by the Russian official comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to put the rivalries of the Cold War behind them and rise as counterweights to the global dominance of the US.
Officials from both countries describe their trade and political ties as better than ever before.
In response to the Chinese official's remarks, Putin referred to China as Russia's "strategic partner in the full sense of this word."
The Russian prime minister went on to offer Moscow's support for China's stance on Taiwan, saying, "We have always supported China on the most sensitive issues, including the Taiwan problem."
Beijing considers Taiwan, which became the base for the self-styled Republic of China headed by Chiang Kai-shek when the Chinese Communist forces defeated the Chinese Nationalist Party in 1949, as an indivisible part of its territory and seeks reunification with the island.
CS/ZAP/MMN
RIA: Russia conducts Navy anti-submarine drills in Sea of Japan
http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20100324/158295950.html10:2824/03/2010
A mixed task force from the Russian Pacific Fleet started on Wednesday a series of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) drills in the Sea of Japan, a fleet spokesman said.
"Two task forces comprising missile destroyers and diesel-powered submarines are taking part in the drills in line with a regular training program," Capt. 1st Rank Roman Martov said.
The exercises involve a number of search-and-destroy missions, simulated torpedo attacks and live-fire drills with on-board artillery and air defense systems.
The Admiral Tributs and Admiral Vinogradov destroyers, which carried out patrol missions in the Gulf of Aden as part of international efforts to fight sea piracy, will take part in the drills.
According to Martov, the exercises will culminate with a "battle" between the destroyers and submarines, when the surface ships attempt to thwart "a surprise attack from the deep."
Russia's Pacific Fleet has a missile cruiser, five destroyers and a large number of submarines in service. Its anti-submarine warfare aircraft include Tu-142 Bear F and Il-38 May planes, and Ka-27 Helix D helicopters.
VLADIVOSTOK, March 24 (RIA Novosti)
Voice of Russia: Russia holds its first anti-radiation exerciseshttp://english.ruvr.ru/2010/03/24/5585189.html
Mar 24, 2010 11:15 Moscow TimeRussia has launched its first radiation emergency exercises in the Far East. The two-day exercises will involve experts and rescue workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Migration Service of Russia. The aim of the exercises is to assess the country’s ability to protect its people in case of a radiation threat.
Itar-Tass: Somali pirates expanding area of operations
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14948243&PageNum=0
24.03.2010, 02.56
VLADIVOSTOK, March 24 (Itar-Tass) – Somali pirates have apparently expanded a geographic area of their operations, as suggested by the reports on their seizure of a Turkish dry cargo ship at a distance of about a thousand nautical miles /1,820 kilometers/ away from the African coast.
According to the press service of the EU Naval Force Somalia, which is fighting with piracy in the Indian Ocean, the dry cargo ship Phrigya waving the Maltese flag has a crew of nineteen Turkish citizens and two Ukrainians.
Also Tuesday, the pirates seized the motor ship Talca en route from Sokhna in Egypt to Bushehr in Iran. The incident took place in the Gulf of Aden some 120 nautical miles away from the shores of Oman, the press service said.
The Talca has a 25-strong crew consisting of 23 Sri Lankans, one Filipino and one Syrian.
RIA: Russian, Qatari premiers to talk energy investmenthttp://en.rian.ru/business/20100324/158294679.html
06:2824/03/2010
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Qatari counterpart sheikh Hamad bin Jasim al-Thani are to meet Wednesday to discuss investment cooperation in the energy sphere, the Russian government said.
The two countries have active energy contacts, including through OPEC and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). The GECF headquarters is situated in Qatar's capital Doha. In December 2009, GECF elected Leonid Bokhanovsky from Russia as its secretary general.
The Qatari premier is in Russia on a working visit at an invitation from Putin.
"Enhancing trade and economic and investment cooperation between Russia and Qatar, first of all in the energy sphere..., is planned for discussion," the government said.
"Special attention is expected to be paid to investment interaction, in particular by establishing joint foundations and consortiums, attracting Qatari capitals to Russia and investing Russian funds in the emirate," it said.
Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Qatar were established in 1988, and following the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, Qatar recognized Russia. The two countries maintain a regular political dialogue on the key international and regional problems.
MOSCOW, March 24 (RIA Novosti)
Wed, Mar 24, 2010, 08:51 GMT
KUNA: Qatari-Russian talks to tackle bilateral cooperation, reign''s situation http://www.zawya.com/printstory.cfm?storyid=ZAWYA20100324080836&l=080800100324
24 March 2010MOSCOW -- Qatari-Russian meetings scheduled to kick off Wednesday will cover cooperation in the domains of energy, economy, countering terrorism, investments along with the situation in the region, sources at the Kremlin said.
President Dmitry Medvedev will discuss ways to boost cooperation in the field of gas under the umbrella of Gas Exporting Countries Forum with Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, a statement issued by Russian presidency said.
Cooperation between Qatar which is world's third in gas reserves, and Russia, world's first will help bring stability into the market and facilitate buyer-seller's relation, it said.
For Russia to cooperate with Qatar which is world's number one in producing and exporting gas, this would help strengthen the forum as it served as the mediator between member countries, it said.
It noted that talks will touch on boosting cooperation between security bodies to counter terror alongside other challenges, adding that Qatari Prime Minister will discuss cooperation in the fields of peaceful use of nuclear energy, economy, investments, and satellite communications with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Enhancing cooperation between Russia and countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and developments in the Middle East will be tackled in the meeting grouping Putin and Qatari Prime Minister, it said.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will brief Qatari Foreign Minister on the quartet's latest meeting on the situation in the Middles East of which took place in Moscow lately, it added.
It noted that both side will discuss developments in the region along boosting economic bilateral relations between the two nations.
© KUNA (Kuwait News Agency) 2010
News.am: Moscow and London discussed CIS, South Caucasus situation
http://news.am/en/news/17392.html
11:07 / 03/24/2010
Russian Deputy FMs Sergei Ryabkov and Grigory Karasin met with UK Foreign Office political Director Geoffrey Adams.
Ryabkov and Adams discussed certain urgent issues of international agenda, inter alia non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and disarmament issues, Iran’s nuke program as well as relations within G8, RF Foreign Ministry informs.
Karasin and Adams touched upon Russia-UK relations with CIS states. Developments in Ukraine and situation in the South Caucasus were also in focus.
S.T.
Itar-Tass: Int'l fuel and energy forum to open in St Petersburg
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14948669&PageNum=0
24.03.2010, 06.12
St PETERSBURG, March 24 (Itar-Tass) - Effectuation of strategic development tasks in the fuel and energy sector is the highlight of the agenda of the St Petersburg International Fuel and Energy Forum 2010 that opens here Wednesday.
A total of 500 officials and experts representing the industrial and research organizations from Russia, CIS countries, Germany, Norway, Finland, and Japan will get together at this international gathering organized by the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, the Federal Agency for Mineral Resource Development, the atomic energy corporation Rosatom, natural gas producer Gazprom, and the St Petersburg exhibition company Restek.
A source at the forum's organizing committee told Itar-Tass six specialized exhibitions have been put up in the pavilions of the Lenexpo exhbition group -- Oil & Gas Expo, Oil Refining & Petrochemistry, MIRR, Trans-TEK-Expo, Russian Power Generating Machines, and AtomTEK-Atomic Energy.
They show the novel technologies and equipment for search for and development of natural resource deposits and the investment potential existing in Russia's mineral resource development projects.
As special display is dedicated to the safe use of the "civilian atomic energy."
The forum's program also includes workshops, roundtable conferences, and seminars on the most pressing issues of the fuel and energy sector.
They will focus on the development of resources lying on the continental shelf of Arctic Seas, energy saving technologies, and utilization of reusable energy sources.
BarentsObserver: National security challenged by Arctic climate changehttp://www.barentsobserver.com/national-security-challenged-by-arctic-climate-change.4762526-58932.html
2010-03-23 The Russian Security Council believes climate change in the Arctic will pose a serious threat to national security, a council representative confirms in a newspaper interview.
Talking to newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Yuri Averyanov, one of the leaders in the Security Council administration, maintains that Russia in 10-15 years will face serious trouble in its Arctic territories because of the melting permafrost.
Thousands of kilometers of pipelines, railway, roads and a big number of towns will be in danger following the melting, and the development will require the introduction of new construction regulations, Averyanov says. He believes that as much as 25 percent of all houses in towns and cities like Tiksi, Yakutsk and Vorkuta already in 10-15 years will become useless because of the unstable ground conditions.
The permafrost covers two thirds of Russian land territories and the changing climate could destabilize all building and engineering facilities in the area.
Mr. Averyanov also believes climate change in the Arctic could results in new inter-state conflicts following different countries’ search and exploration of energy resources, use of sea transport routes, bio-resources and more.
-The circumpolar countries, and first of all the USA and its allies, are actively expanding their scientific, economical and military presence in the Arctic in order to get control over Arctic waters […] and seek to restrict Russia’s access to developing its Arctic deposits, Averyanov told the newspaper.
He also believes that the permafrost melting could significantly hamper the country’s abilities to use military equipment in the region.
The statements from the Security Council representative are outlined also in Russia National Security Strategy, which was adopted in spring last year. As BarentsObserver reported, the document outlines the shelf of the Barents Sea and other areas of the Arctic as regions of upcoming international competition for energy resources, and that
competition and conflict over the hydrocarbon resources might eventually lead to the use of armed force and a disrupted power balance in Russian border areas.
Updated March, 24 2010 10:40:2Viet Nam News: President seeks stronger defence ties with Russiahttp://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Politics-Laws/197975/President-seeks-stronger-defence-ties-with-Russia-.html
HA NOI — Viet Nam is willing to boost co-operation with Russia in all sectors, especially in economics, trade and investment, and security and national defence, President Nguyen Minh Triet said in a meeting with Russia's Defence Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov.
Viet Nam has always been a good friend of the Russian people, he affirmed.
The President expressed the Vietnamese people's gratitude to the people of the former Soviet Union and the Russian people who gave valuable and efficient support and assistance to the Vietnamese people's struggle for national liberation, unity and reconstruction.
The former Soviet Union and Russia helped Viet Nam to train many people who later made important constributions to their Fatherland and build many projects which were still very useful and were symbols of the friendship between the two nations, he said.
Serdyukov reported the results of dialogue between high-ranking delegations of the two countries' ministries of Defence to the President. He said that the two sides discussed issues related to technical military co-operation and national defence and security to tighten the relationship between two ministries, contributing to the development of Russia-Viet Nam ties.
Serdyukov affirmed that Viet Nam was a strategic partner, the Vietnamese people were dear friends and that Russia would continue developing the comprehensive co-operation with Viet Nam.
Triet said that he had accepted the invitation of his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to Moscow to attend the celebration of Victory over Fascism Day on May 9. — VNS
Reuters: Russia, China push Iran to change nuclear stancehttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62M5QY20100324
Tue, Mar 23 2010
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONSTue Mar 23, 2010 10:28pm EDT
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia and China have quietly made clear to the Iranian government they want Tehran to change its approach to the nuclear issue and accept a U.N. atomic fuel offer, Western diplomats said on Tuesday.
Russia's and China's coordinated diplomatic approaches took place in Tehran around the beginning of March, according to several Western U.N. Security Council diplomats.
They said it was significant that two powers seen as blocking Western efforts to get tough on Tehran appeared to be using their influence behind the scenes to ratchet up the pressure on the Islamic Republic.
"Russia and China had a demarche in Tehran to try and get them to shift their position on the nuclear issue, particularly with regard to the Tehran Research Reactor," one diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"The Russians and Chinese were saying that their position (on a new sanctions resolution) would depend on Iran's response to the demarches."
Another Western diplomat confirmed the Russian and Chinese "demarche," a formal diplomatic approach that can be anything from a gentle expression of displeasure to an angry protest.
"The Russians said they got nothing from Iran," the second diplomat said. "The Chinese said they got a response from the Iranians to wait a little longer and they will come up with something. But they (China) didn't get anything in the end."
Russian frustration with Iran has been growing since Tehran snubbed a U.N. nuclear watchdog plan under which the Iranians would ship most of their low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for further enrichment and processing into fuel assemblies for a Tehran reactor for medical isotopes.
Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Iran was letting the opportunity for normal cooperation slip away.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Moscow may support new sanctions on Iran, RIA news agency reported.
CHINA AGREES TO DISCUSS SANCTIONS
On March 4, Russian and Chinese U.N. envoys used a meeting of the Security Council to publicly urge Iran to accept the U.N. fuel plan. That proposal was meant to buy time for
negotiations among the six powers and Iran by moving potential nuclear bomb material abroad.
Iran rejects Western allegations its nuclear program is a quest to develop atomic weapons and has ignored five U.N. resolutions ordering it to halt its enrichment program.
While China has urged Tehran to accept the International Atomic Energy Agency plan, it has repeatedly said the time was not right for new sanctions against Iran. Beijing has yet to react to a sanctions proposal drafted by Washington and circulated to Russia, China and the three European powers.
But China's refusal to engage in what Western diplomats described as "substantive discussions" on a new round of sanctions against Tehran may have come to an end, envoys said.
"The Chinese have finally agreed to participate in a conference call this week to discuss sanctions," said a Western diplomat. That call, among senior foreign ministry officials from the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, was tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.
"The Iranians clearly haven't come around after China's and Russia's demarches, so perhaps the Chinese are accepting that the time to discuss sanctions has come," one diplomat said, adding that "you never know with the Chinese."
If the Chinese agree to begin negotiating on a sanctions resolution, the measure might not be ready to put to a vote in the Security Council before June, several Western diplomats said.
The latest U.S. sanctions draft includes a proposed a ban on new Iranian banks abroad and foreign banks in Iran as well as an arms embargo with international inspections similar to one in place against North Korea, Western diplomats said.
It would also urge "vigilance" against Iran's central bank, ban insurance and reinsurance of shipments to and from Iran and would blacklist several Iranian shipping firms.
In Washington, John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. Congress should not finish legislation to squeeze Iran's gasoline suppliers while the Obama administration is seeking another U.N. sanctions resolution.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Reuters: Russia, China urged Iran to change nuclear stancehttp://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN2310434020100323
Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:09pm GMT
* Russian, Chinese envoys approached Iran govt in Tehran
* Six powers plan talks on Iran sanctions this week
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, March 23 (Reuters) - Russia and China have quietly made clear to the Iranian government that they want Tehran to change its approach to the nuclear issue and accept a U.N. atomic fuel offer, Western diplomats said on Tuesday.
Russia's and China's coordinated diplomatic approaches took place in Tehran around the beginning of March, according to several Western U.N. Security Council diplomats.
They said it was significant that two powers seen as blocking Western efforts to get tough on Tehran appeared to be using their influence behind the scenes to ratchet up the pressure on the Islamic Republic.
"Russia and China had a demarche in Tehran to try and get them to shift their position on the nuclear issue, particularly with regard to the Tehran Research Reactor," one diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"The Russians and Chinese were saying that their position (on a new sanctions resolution) would depend on Iran's response to the demarches."
Another Western diplomat confirmed the Russian and Chinese "demarche," a formal diplomatic approach that can be anything from a gentle expression of displeasure to an angry protest.
"The Russians said they got nothing from Iran," the second diplomat said. "The Chinese said they got a response from the Iranians to wait a little longer and they will come up with something. But they (China) didn't get anything in the end."
Russian frustration with Iran has been growing since Tehran snubbed a U.N. nuclear watchdog plan under which the Iranians would ship most of their low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for further enrichment and processing into fuel assemblies for a Tehran reactor for medical isotopes.
Last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Iran was letting the opportunity for normal cooperation slip away.[ID:nWLB0471] Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Moscow may support new sanctions on Iran, RIA news agency reported.[ID:nWLB0483]
CHINA AGREES TO DISCUSS SANCTIONS
On March 4, Russian and Chinese U.N. envoys used a meeting of the Security Council to publicly urge Iran to accept the U.N. fuel plan. That proposal was meant to buy time for negotiations between the six powers and Iran by moving potential nuclear bomb material abroad. [ID:nN04167683]
Iran rejects Western allegations that its nuclear program is a covert quest to develop atomic weapons and has ignored five U.N. resolutions ordering it to halt its enrichment program.
While China has urged Tehran to accept the International Atomic Energy Agency plan, it has repeatedly said the time was not right for new sanctions against Iran. Beijing has yet to react to a sanctions proposal drafted by Washington and circulated to Russia, China and the three European powers.
But China's refusal to engage in what Western diplomats described as "substantive discussions" on a new round of sanctions against Tehran may have come to an end, envoys said.
"The Chinese have finally agreed to participate in a conference call this week to discuss sanctions," said a Western diplomat. That call has been tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.
It was not clear if the Chinese decision to join the call among senior foreign ministry officials from the five permanent Security Council members and Germany to discuss the U.S. proposal after weeks of delays represented a shift in its position. But several diplomats said they were hopeful.
"The Iranians clearly haven't come around after China's and Russia's demarches, so perhaps the Chinese are accepting that the time to discuss sanctions has come," one diplomat said, adding that "you never know with the Chinese."
The latest U.S. sanctions draft includes a proposed a ban on new Iranian banks abroad and foreign banks in Iran as well as an arms embargo with international inspections similar to one in place against North Korea, Western diplomats said.
It would also urge "vigilance" against Iran's central bank, ban insurance and reinsurance of shipments to and from Iran and would blacklist several Iranian shipping firms.
Russia and China backed three rounds of sanctions against Iran but worked to dilute the measures before they were put to a Security Council vote. Western diplomats expect them to do the same if they agree to negotiate on new sanctions. (Editing by Chris Wilson)
RIA: Russian drug chief to announce new plan against Afghan drug threat http://en.rian.ru/world/20100324/158295565.html
09:3024/03/2010
Russia's drug control chief, Viktor Ivanov, will announce new proposals on Wednesday for eliminating the narcotics threat from Afghanistan at the Russia-NATO Council meeting in Brussels, a law enforcement source said.
"In particular, Russia's proposals will include plans of eliminating opium plantations in Afghanistan, exchange of operative data with NATO members, including on location of drug laboratories and deliveries of precursors," the source told RIA Novosti.
Ivanov will also meet with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the heads of antinarcotics services from Italy and Britain.
He will hold a press conference after the meeting.
Russia recently announced plans to boost its drug control mission in Afghanistan, saying that Afghan drug production "has long outgrown the scope of one country and has given rise to global drug trafficking."
Afghan drug production increased dramatically after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban in 2001, and Russia has been one of the most affected countries, with heroin consumption rising steeply. An estimated 90% of heroin consumed in Russia is trafficked from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
According to official statistics, there are 30,000-40,000 drug-related deaths in Russia every year. Worldwide, more than 100,000 people died from Afghan heroin in 2009 according to UN estimates.
MOSCOW, March 24 (RIA Novosti
Itar-Tass: Russian-NATO Council to discuss drugs production in Afghanistan
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14948689&PageNum=0
24.03.2010, 01.50
BRUSSELS, March 24 (Itar-Tass) – Russia-NATO Council is expected to have an expanded session at the level of ambassadors to discuss the problem of drugs production in Afghanistan and Russia’s new military doctrine.
Viktor Ivanov, the director of the Russian Federal Service for Control over the Circulation of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances /Rosnarkokontrol/ has arrived in Brussels to attend the meeting.
A diplomat on the Russian mission to NATO told Itar-Tass “Viktor Ivanov will hold a briefing for our NATO partners where he will specify Russia’s position on the threat posed by Afghan drugs and will speak about Russia’s vision of the prospects for cooperation with the alliance to neutralize this threat.”
No practical decisions are expected, the diplomat said.
Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said earlier Moscow is interested in NATO’s success in Afghanistan.
“We’re ready to cooperate actively with the alliance in that area but our assistance isn’t gratuitous and we expect active efforts on NATO’s part in fighting with the production of drugs in Afghanistan,” Rogozin said.
In the second part of the session, which will be held at Russia’s initiative, the Russian side will make public the detail of its new military doctrine.
Moscow Times: Russia's UN Envoy Presses NATO on Poppies http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russias-un-envoy-presses-nato-on-poppies/402389.html
24 March 2010Reuters
UNITED NATIONS — Russia's UN envoy has urged U.S. and NATO commanders in Afghanistan to continue to eradicate opium poppy fields after reports that they would now pay poppy farmers to destroy their own crops.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin made clear to the UN Security Council that Moscow was concerned about the reported "intention of ISAF [NATO] in Afghanistan to give up on destroying the poppy fields, including in those territories that have been liberated from Taliban."
"How can we overcome the Taliban when they continue to obtain financial resources from the illegal drugs trade?" Churkin asked the 15-nation Security Council on Monday after it voted unanimously to extend the mandate of the UN mission in Afghanistan for another year.
After weeks of intense fighting over the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, U.S. Marines have said they were taking cautious aim at the drug trade, with a new program designed to pay opium poppy farmers to destroy their own crops without a fight, instead of NATO troops destroying the poppy.
The goal of the new program is to tackle the drug trade that fuels the insurgency without alienating farmers whose livelihoods depend on a crop they planted last year.
Afghanistan is the world's top producer of poppies used to make opium, a key ingredient in the production of heroin.
Churkin indicated Russia wanted U.S. and other NATO forces to continue destroying Afghan poppy fields themselves.
"We are convinced that the ISAF contingent and the anti-terrorist coalition must … continue in an active and robust way to deal with the drug threat coming from Afghanistan," Churkin said.
"This is the only way to build on what has been achieved militarily, and this approach will mean a significant contribution to the long-term stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan and the region," he said.
He also warned Security Council members that "any attempt to bring the Taliban on board will be a great mistake."
The Russian ambassador also raised concerns about the Afghan government's reconciliation process — an attempt to reach out to the Taliban to integrate, and offer amnesty to those willing to support the Kabul government.
Churkin said Moscow backed the idea of a political settlement, including reconciliation, but made clear it could not violate Security Council sanctions going back to 1999 that have imposed asset freezes and travel bans on hundreds of individuals and firms linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida.
"A dialogue is possible only with those who have laid down their arms, recognized the government and constitution of Afghanistan and have broken their links with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups," he said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's latest report on Afghanistan included what UN diplomats said was a request for a green light for UN officials to continue informal "discreet" talks with the Taliban to support Afghan reconciliation efforts.
The resolution extending the mandate of the UN mission in Afghanistan included such a green light, but made clear any UN involvement in the process would have to take place with "full respect" for the sanctions regime — which UN diplomats said would rule out talks with any Taliban officials on the UN blacklist.
Russia Today: Horrific tale of Afghan family addiction a sad metaphor for casualties of warhttp://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-24/afghanistan-families-drug-addicted.html/print
24 March, 2010, 08:36
The Russia -NATO Council is meeting in Brussels Wednesday to discuss ways of reducing or eliminating drug production in Afghanistan. But as politicians talk, people continue to suffer from prospering drug business.
Russia is facing a crisis, with an estimated 2.5 million addicts – more than any other country in the world – and 90 per cent of them use cheap Afghan heroin.
Moscow estimates narcotics production in Afghanistan has increased 44 times since the US-led war started in 2001. It says coalition forces are just not doing enough to eradicate the problem. And drugs production remains a major source of income for Taliban militants.
As she does every morning, Karima lights up a joint of hashish. She does this in front of her six children and encourages her oldest, aged 12 to smoke alongside her.
The 25-year-old started taking drugs when she was only 13. That was when her parents married her off to a man who used to beat her, and later abandoned her. She blames him for getting her started but now finds it impossible to stop.
“My children act like they’re crazy. They are careless about a lot of things, they forget about things I send them to do. But now we cannot survive without this drug. There is this nice shopkeeper: he gave me a bag of rice to feed my children, but it’s full of mouse droppings, and I’m cooking it, but it’s not safe for the children. It’s really difficult to get food to feed them,” Karima says.
Karima’s mother and sister share her addiction. They all live in a one-room shack in the heart of Kabul’s old city. Outside, animals live in the garbage, and clothes dry in the sandy mountain air.
The three women are addicted to marijuana, heroin and opium. Whatever money they get is first spent on satisfying their cravings. Only then is there cash for food, a situation that makes their lives desperate.
“My mother told me, ‘Let’s go to the bazaar, I want to buy something for you.’ I said, ‘Really?’ We went, and my mother said to a man, ‘Do you want to buy this girl?’ he yelled, ‘God forgive you!’ and gave us a hundred Afghanis. So we went to buy some dry bread. Another day, my mom needed money and took my sister. We were crying so much. Then she tried to sell me again. I begged her not to. And she said that if I go to people’s houses and beg, then she’ll keep me. So that’s what I do,” Karima’s daughter Faima told RT.
Afghanistan’s drug problem is spiraling out of control. Official figures say one million Afghans are addicted. Many of them are refugees who returned to the country when the Taliban were overthrown. Many children are born handicapped because mothers are
taking drugs while pregnant. And more and more women and children are falling prey to addiction.
“Afghan women and children are living in the camps. The camps are there because there are no jobs. The people are making carpets. This woman thinks that opium will make her stronger, and work harder. And the small children won’t disturb their mother if they have a bit of opium,” says Dr. Tariq Suliman, director of the Nejat Centre of drug rehabilitation.
The female carpet weavers often take opium to dull the aches in their finger joints, and to be able to work longer hours. By blowing opium into the faces of their children, they’re guaranteed at least a few hours of peace and quiet.
An abandoned building in Kabul, which once served as a Russian cultural center, was the place where drug addicts used to live and feed their habits. But today, the problem is much more prevalent in other parts of the country, where lawlessness and war lords reign.
It is in those provinces that drug production remains a massive source of income for the Taliban insurgency.
”The money generated from opium is more than four or five billion [US dollars], of which 300 million is only spending in Afghanistan for the insurgents, for Taliban, for corrupt officials, for all other areas in Afghanistan. Only 300 millions are spending here, but the rest is [beyond] Afghanistan¹s borders,” Dr Mohamad Zafar, Deputy Minister of policy and co-ordination counter narcotics says.
The Afghan government has its work cut out. Not only preventing the outflow of drugs across its borders, but also locally, where a dose of opium costs just $2. People buy drugs instead of food. Last night, Karima and her family had some rice and potato for dinner, but since then they have eating nothing. And while she knows she is condemning her children to a life like hers, she feels helpless to stop it.
Prague Monitor: Obama wants new START treaty to be signed in Prague http://praguemonitor.com/2010/03/24/obama-wants-new-start-treaty-be-signed-prague
ČTK | 24 March 2010
Washington/Prague, March 24 (CTK) - U.S. President Barack Obama would like to sign the U.S.-Russian START treaty on nuclear arms reduction with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Prague, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes today, referring to several reliable diplomatic sources.
The treaty, to follow up the historic START treaty from 1991, will be the first concrete achievement within Obama's vision of the world free of nuclear weapons which he for the first time outlined on a visit to Prague last year.
If the negotiators managed to complete the treaty in the nearest days, it could be signed in Prague in early April, almost exactly one year after Obama's Prague speech, HN writes.
Obama and Medvedev agreed to sign the treaty last July. At the time, the media speculated about Prague as a possible venue for the signing ceremony, but simultaneously they mentioned Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm in this connection.
A few days ago information emerged that Ukraine is interested in hosting the signature meeting, which the Russians would find suitable, but Washington has declined the Kiev alternative.
According to HN's sources, Obama clearly wishes for the treaty to be signed in Prague.
Russian daily Kommersant wrote last week that the new Russia-U.S. arms reduction treaty will be signed in Prague in early April. Similarly, the daily Moskovski komsomolets said Prague is "hundred percent" sure of hosting the signing ceremony. Medvedev is to leave for Prague immediately after his visit to Slovakia, due on April 6-7.
However, no official statement concerning the venue and date of the START treaty signing was mentioned during U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Moscow last week where she discussed the removal of the last obstacles preventing the treaty's signature.
A week ago, Czech Foreign Ministry spokesman Filip Kanda told CTK that no one has officially asked the ministry to organise such a meeting so far. Kanda said he knows nothing about such a request being addressed to any other Czech institution, such as the Presidential Office.
The START treaty is expected to be completed for signing before the Washington conference on nuclear safety that is to start on April 12.
Thenews. pl: Polish president invited to Moscow for WW II ceremonyhttp://www.thenews.pl/international/artykul128068_polish-president-invited-to-moscow-for-ww-ii-ceremony.html
24.03.2010 07:07The Presidential Chancellery has informed it has finally received an official invitation for Lech Kaczynski to attend anniversary ceremonies of the end of WW II in Moscow. The invitation has been extended by the Russian ambassador in Warsaw, Vladimir Grinin. Head of the Presidential Chancellery Wladyslaw Stasiak said Lech Kaczynski is “seriously considering” his presence at the 65 anniversary ceremony of the victory over Nazi Germany, to be held in the Russian capital on May 9 .
Minister Stasiak explained that according to protocol the matter will be referred to the foreign ministries of both countries for further arrangements. (ss)
Balkans.com: Bulgaria: Atomstroyexport with up to 80% share in NPP Belenhttp://www.balkans.com/open-news.php?uniquenumber=52263Adamant - 24.03.2010Atomstroyexport, the major developer of NPP Belene, will own up to 80% of the project company that is expected to be established for the development of the project, VP Timur Bavlakov said.
The issuance of a building permit is expected by the end of the year. The developer will provide the necessary funding for the project during the next two years.
Adamant Capital Partners www.acp.bg
Focus: Interior Ministry uncovers scheme for funds draining from NPP Belene http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n214157
24 March 2010 | 06:01 | FOCUS News Agency Sofia. The NPP Belene project is given as an example of “non-transparent government policy and public manipulation” in a report of the Bulgarian Parliament’s Economic Policy, Energy and Tourism Committee. The report defines Gazprom’s offer to become a shareholder as “suspicious” and states Russian Atomstroyexport was chosen to implement the project in a mock tender. So far, a total of EUR 1 billion has been invested in the project, with payments for consultants and Atomstroyexport being EUR 430, 4 million, the report reads. The document reveals the conclusions from a check-up performed by the Public Financial Inspection Agency (PFIA) in November 2009. The PFIA found out that the BGN 700 million allocated from the fiscal reserve to the Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) were not spent accordingly. BGN 300 of this sum was provided, so that BEH might increase the capital of the National Electricity Company (NEC) and order the equipment for NPP Belene. It was disclosed that this amount was paid to Atomstroyexport and not used to finance NEC’s participation in the joint venture company, as intended by the Energy Minister at the time Petar Dimitrov. It is highly likely that for this reason the German RWE withdrew from participation in the project, the report states. Apart from this, the Ministry of Interior has uncovered a scheme for the draining of NPP Belene through the sale of scrap from the old site of the power plant at lowered costs. The report concluded that so far, NEC has suffered BGN 1 million of losses, the Trud daily learned.
Google search: Kazakh, Russian Vice PMs to hold working meeting Times of Central Asia (subscription) - 1 hour agoASTANA, March 24 (KazInform) - First vice prime ministers of Kazakhstan and Russia Umirzak Shukeyev and Igor Shuvalov are expected to meet in Moscow today. ...
Public Radio of Armenia: Minister Nalbandian to visit Moscow http://www.armradio.am/news/?part=off&id=17084
24.03.2010 12:37March 25-26 the Foreign Minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, will pay a working visit to Moscow to participate in the sitting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent states, Press and Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported.
Messenger: Are Georgia and Russia talking in secret? http://www.messenger.com.ge/issues/2070_march_24_2010/2070_gvanca.html
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze Wednesday, March 24
Leader of the Parliamentary minority Christian Democratic Movement (CDM), Giorgi Targamadze, stated at the Parliamentary session on March 23 that secret negotiations might be going on between the Georgian and Russian authorities. He said that suspicions have been sparked by reports that Russia is about to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
“Everyone knows that Russia cannot join WTO because Georgia has used its veto to exclude it. If this new information is true it can be considered a sign that there is hidden, confidential collaboration going on between the Georgian and Russian Governments. Not long ago the Larsi Checkpoint reopened after such collaborations and we cannot therefore rely on the Government. If the Georgian Government really is not collaborating with the Russians why is the Georgian side ready to withdraw its veto?” Targamadze stated, adding that the reasons behind such actions should necessarily be made known to the public.
In response to Targamadze’s statement Parliament Speaker Davit Bakradze said that all important issues for the country have always been discussed openly by the Government. "I cannot agree with Giorgi Targamadze's claim that the decision on the Larsi Checkpoint was made after confidential collaborations with the Russian Government. We discussed this at a Security Council meeting and only then decided to reopen it. As for today’s statement about Russia joining the World Trade Organisation I have decided that this can be discussed in Parliament. Just call a meeting of the relevant Parliamentary Committee and invite a Foreign Ministry representative to attend, so there is no speculation about this," Bakradze said.
This initiative was accepted by the CDM Deputies, one of them, Nika Laliashvili, told The Messenger, "we will not be surprised if some kind of hidden and dirty negotiations are taking place between the Russian and Georgian Governments concerning WTO as the Larsi decision was made behind the backs of the Georgian public. That is why we demand full declaration of the Georgian Government’s attitude to the Russian application to join the World Trade Organisation. We welcome a Parliamentary Committee meeting,
at which a Foreign Ministry representative will also be present, being held on this issue. Presumably the meeting will be held next week,” Laliashvili said.
Analyst Ramaz Sakvarelidze has told The Messenger, "The Georgian Government has made mistakes which have assisted Russia. For example, during the 2008 war all the mistakes made by the Georgian Government were used perfectly by Russia to occupy Georgian territory. Another big mistake was selling important strategic facilities to the Russians. After making these mistakes the Georgian Government has to make concessions to improve relations with Russia. If Russia does join WTO and Georgia supports its application this will be another concession made to improve relations with Russia,” Sakvarelidze said.
Expert Club: Moscow is preparing a military agreement with Tskhinvali http://eng.expertclub.ge/portal/cnid__4003/alias__Expertclub/lang__en/tabid__2546/default.aspx
24/03/2010 11:46
Russia increases military cooperation with the puppet regimes. This time, Moscow is preparing to sign an agreement on military-technical cooperation with South Ossetia. With this regard, a delegation of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation arrived in the occupied region. The delegation met with representatives of Kokoity regime. Earlier, Moscow has signed a similar agreement with the puppet leadership of Abkhazia.
Expert Club: Bagapsh and Kokoity will have to share with Russian Ministry of Regional Development http://eng.expertclub.ge/portal/cnid__4005/alias__Expertclub/lang__en/tabid__2546/default.aspx
24/03/2010 11:54
Russian grants are disappearing without a trace and Moscow have decided to tighten control over expenditure of funds allocated to Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. 19 billion rubles that were promised to the puppet regimes for three years will be controlled by the Ministry of Regional Development of Russia.
Thus, the leadership of Russia once again actually equalized the occupied regions of Georgia with Russian regions.
Abkhazian "Prime Minister" Sergei Shamba said that before Sukhumi and Moscow used to strike a balance together. But experts believe that it is only a change in shadow financial schemes and now the puppet regimes will have to share more with Russian officials.
Expert Club: Shevchenko promised to help "Daryal" http://eng.expertclub.ge/portal/cnid__4002/alias__Expertclub/lang__en/tabid__2546/default.aspx
24/03/2010 11:45
The Public Chamber of Russia wants to change system of crossing of the Russian-Georgian border. Member of the Chamber Maxim Shevchenko promised residents of border areas to achieve simplification of crossing system through the Kazbegi - Upper Larsi checkpoint. This promise was made by a well-known TV presenter and ideologist of the Kremlin in Vladikavkaz. Shevchenko met there with representatives of the organization Daryal that was created last year by Russian security services. In particular, the organization voices new territorial claims to Georgia. It calls to add Kazbegi district to Russia.
Messenger: IPRM meeting in Gali ends with no results http://www.messenger.com.ge/issues/2070_march_24_2010/2070_mzia.html
By Mzia Kupunia Wednesday, March 24
As expected the fourteenth round of incidents prevention and response mechanism meetings in Gali between the Georgian and the de facto Abkhazian authorities ended with no result on Tuesday.
One of the main issues discussed at the meeting was returning the body of Demur Gogokhia, who died in Dranda prison in Abkhazia, to Georgia. Georgian delegation members say that the Abkhazian authorities refused to give the body to Gogokhia’s family. Negotiations on this failed during the previous incidents prevention and response mechanism meeting on March 2 as well. The crime and human rights situations in de facto Abkhazia were also on the agenda of the meeting, according to representative of the legitimate Abkhazian Government-in-Exile Levan Tevzaia.
The Abkhazian Government-in-Exile reported an increase of Russian weapons in Abkhazia. According to its Chairman Gia Baramia, 20 more armoured vehicles were deployed at the Gudauta Russian military base on March 15-16, including 8 modernised armoured personnel carriers and 11 tanks. “We have information that 120 more soldiers have been deployed as well,” Baramia said. The Chairman of the Abkhazian Government-in-Exile said that new military bases are being “intensively” built in the conflict zone. “Bases are being constructed in Tagiloni, Pichori, Meore Otobaia, Saberio and Lkokhura,” he said. Currently Russian has about 120-150 armoured vehicles and 4,000 soldiers in the region, according to the Abkhazian legitimate Government.
News agency RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday about de facto Abkhazian President Sergey Baghapsh’s visit to Moscow. Developing mutual cooperation in the fields of economy, communications and defence will be discussed at meetings in The Kremlin, Kristian Bzhania, representative of the de facto Abkhazian leader, told journalists. Baghapsh’s visit to Russia will last for a week, RIA Novosti reported, and while these negotiations are taking place a delegation led by de facto Foreign Minister of Abkazia Maxim Ghvinjia is visiting Latin American states, Apsnypress has reported. “Ghvinjia has already visited many states and conducted effective diplomatic activities, which is very important,” de facto Abkhazian Prime Minister Sergey Shamba told journalists. He said that the Abkhazian delegation will visit Middle East states as well. “It is obvious that they sympathise with Abkhazia and its fight for freedom and independence,” the de facto PM stated, adding that the visits increase the “international prestige” of Abkhazia. “The diplomats will return on March 25,” Shamba noted.
Analysts in Georgia suggest that Shamba’s statements about a “big delegation” being sent to Latin America and the Middle East are part of an information war with Georgia. “Considering the number of people left in Abkhazia, the size of the so-called Abkhazian Foreign Ministry and its financial resources it is ridiculous to talk about any big delegation,” analyst Gocha Gvaramia told The Messenger. “The only state which might consider having any relations with de facto Abkhazia is Iran, which has its own interests concerning Russia. However Iran cooperates with Georgia as well, so recognition of Abkhazia by Iran, is unlikely,” he added.
Georgian Daily: Russian Customs Union May Undermine Georgia Embargohttp://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17856&Itemid=74
March 23, 2010
By Helena Bedwell
March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Russia’s customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan may provide a loophole that will allow Georgian goods to enter Russia for the first time since an embargo was imposed in 2006, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said.
“Georgian products may return to Russia via Belarus and Kazakhstan” when trade borders are removed within the customs union on July 1, Saakashvili’s spokeswoman Manana Manjgaladze told reporters in the capital Tbilisi today, citing the president.
Georgia won’t rely on regaining access to the Russian market, since Russia created the customs union and will dictate its policies, Manjgaladze said. The issue of trade with Russia has been “politicized” since it banned imports of Georgian wine and water in March 2006, claiming the beverages were unfit for consumption, she said.
In 2009, Georgia exported about $20 million of goods to Kazakhstan and $14 million of goods to Belarus, including wine and mineral water. Before the trade embargo, Georgia shipped about 80 percent of its wine to Russia.
Georgia exported 59.3 million bottles of wine in 2005, the last full year before the embargo was imposed. Exports plummeted 67 percent in the embargo year to 19.5 million bottles and have hovered around 11-12 million bottles a year ever since, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
Espionage
Russia expanded its embargo in October 2006, cutting road,rail, and air and sea links with Georgia, halting postal service and blocking money transfers after Georgia arrested four Russian servicemen, accusing them of espionage. The four were released and expelled on Oct. 2, the day Russia imposed sanctions.
The popular Borjomi brand of mineral water, which Georgia exports to Belarus and Kazakhstan, may break into the Russian market thanks to the customs union, Georgian Agriculture Minister Bakur Kvezereli said last week. “It’s possible unless Russia changes the rules,” he said.
Borjomi shipped at least 60 million bottles a year to Russia before the embargo, said Levan Bagdavadze, a company official. Current production is 110 million bottles a year, he said. Georgian Glass and Mineral Water leased the Borjomi plant for 25 years in March 2009 for $8.2 million.
The Russian ban on Georgian wine and mineral water won’t necessarily be lifted when the customs union comes into force because it was imposed for health reasons, Davit Narmania, executive director of the Caucasian Institute for Economic and Social Research, said by telephone.
Financial Times: UC Rusal reprieve in Guinea battlehttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/15b7012a-3619-11df-aa43-00144feabdc0.html
By Catherine Belton and Tom Burgis
Published: March 23 2010 02:00 | Last updated: March 23 2010 02:00
Oleg Deripaska's UC Rusal said yesterday it had won a reprieve in its legal battle with Guinea over ownership of the Friguia alumina refinery.
The company said a Guinean appeals court had overturned a previous ruling that said Rusal bought Friguia unlawfully in 2006, saying the lower court had lacked jurisdiction to do so.
But Guinea's mining minister, Mahmoud Thiam, said he was not aware of the ruling and intended to pursue a claim for compensation. "Even if they won an appeal giving them back the shares, it does not negate the fact that they owe us in excess of $900m," he said.
The Guinean government can appeal the court's decision.
Catherine Belton, Moscow, and Tom Burgis, London
Shephard.co.uk: Russia displays civil and military helicopters in Chilehttp://www.shephard.co.uk/news/rotorhub-com/russia-displays-civil-and-military-helicopters-in-chile/5955/
March 23, 2010
Russian Helicopters showcased a lineup of rotorcraft built for the Latin American market at the largest regional aerospace show FIDAE 2010 (Santiago, Chile). Russian Helicopters is the holding company of the Russian rotorcraft industry. Civil Mi-17, Ka-32A11BC and Ansat helicopters are on display at the Russian Helicopters exposition. The exposition of FSUE Rosoboronexport boasting the military Ka-28M and Ka-31, also manufactured by companies within Russian Helicopters.
Russian Helicopters is the specialised management company of the Russian rotorcraft industry. Consolidation of industry enterprises was completed in 2009, bringing all Russian companies together into one holding company. The holding company retains the legacy of Kamov and Mil design bureaus, and helicopters are now offered under a unified brand in all segments: light, medium, and heavy.
Russian rotorcraft are currently operated in 100 countries worldwide, including Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and other countries in Latin America. Russian Helicopters offers a diversified Russian rotorcraft lineup to partners in the Americas capable of performing any missions, from carrying people and commercial operations to special operations in natural disaster areas. Light helicopters feature the Ka-226T, Ansat, Mi-34C1(C2). The Mi-17, Ka-32A11BC, and Mi-38 are in the medium segment, while the Mi-26T is a heavy helicopter. These rotorcraft may be employed in corporate, passenger, cargo, search and rescue, construction, patrol, and firefighting missions. The Mi-34C1(C2), capable of the most complex aerobatics, is the helicopter of choice for amateur pilots and professional sports pilots.
The combination of ease of operation and maintenance, reliability, low cost, and unique payload and altitude capabilities make Russian rotorcraft one of the most rational options on the global market.
Russian Helicopters is creating a global support network based on certified MROs and joint service enterprises. This will allow the company to support Russian rotorcraft throughout their entire lifecycle, from delivery to scrapping. New MROs are being opened and existing ones are being certified in line with this initiative.
The existing MRO infrastructure coincides with the Russian Helicopters sales geography. For instance, several service and repair centers are undergoing certification in Europe, ultimately leading to the creation of a legitimate system of integrated logistics support in that region. Russian Helicopters MRO centers exist in virtually all countries of the CIS. In 2009-2010 such centers will be built in South-East Asia, Central and South Africa. In Latin America this network will be expanded through acting centres in Mexico and Peru. Similar centres are being built in Venezuela and Brazil.
"Our American partners are already well acquainted with the Mi-8/17 and Ka-32A11BC helicopter types that are among the most reliable and popular rotorcraft in the world. They are effectively operated in 100 countries worldwide. We are openly cooperating with our existing partners and will be happy to establish new partnerships on both American continents," Russian Helicopters COO Andrei Shibitov said.
The light multi-role Turbomeca Arrius 2G2-equipped Ka-226T can be employed in urban high-rise construction, surface surveillance, and police operations, including drug interdiction. According to Russian Helicopters experts, this can be particularly useful on the Latin American market. The coaxial (dual rotor) configuration gives the Ka-226T an advantage in payload and altitude (up to 23000 ft).
The light Ansat is a comfortable Russian-made corporate helicopter with a spacious cabin that can accommodate any additional equipment. For other missions the Ansat can be fitted with an emergency system for landing on water, searchlight, hoist, firefighting or crop spraying equipment. Additional fuel tanks may be installed to increase maximum range.
The medium multi-role Mi-17 (and modifications) is used in passenger and cargo transportation. They are very popular in the world with 12 thousand delivered to date. The helicopter can perform a number of tasks both day and night in any weather and climatic conditions at any spot on the globe, including Iraq and Afghanistan. The Mi-17 is the helicopter of choice for oil development companies with offshore sites. It can land on ships and oil platforms. The Mi-171 can stay up in the air for 8 hours and cover up to 746 miles. Such helicopters were employed in rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005.
The Ka-32A11BC can be employed in a wide number of missions. It can carry passengers and cargo, perform construction and engineering, firefighting, search and rescue, emergency, and patrol tasks. The helicopter may be fitted with any necessary additional equipment according to mission. October 2009 saw EU certification of the Ka-32A11BC. The Russian-made helicopter was granted type certificate EASA.IM.R.133 allowing any EU company to operate it commercially.
The new cargo and passenger Mi-38 is designed for transportation, forestry, construction, loading/unloading, search and rescue, emergency, medevac, and geologic exploration operations and may also be used as a comfortable corporate shuttle for 20-30 passengers.
The Mi-26T is the world's heaviest-lifting helicopter to go into production, boasting unrivalled performance and economy. These helicopters are employed by the ISAF in Afghanistan in a wide range of missions, including the evacuation of US troops and recovery of damaged ISAF helicopters. US President Barack Obama officially thanked the crew of the Mi-26T belonging to the Russian company Vertikal-T for successfully recovering a CH-47 Chinook from the Kandahar region in October 2009. In China, the Mi-26T took part in rescue operations after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Its unique performance allowed it to transport rescue teams and heavy equipment, and to evacuate people in significant numbers at a time. The Mi-26TS is capable of carrying up to 20 tons internally or externally.
Source: Russian Helicopters, JSC
Moscow Times: Sheremetyevo Terminal Date http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/sheremetyevo-terminal-date/402430.html
24 March 2010
Sheremetyevo International Airport will open its new Terminal E on March 29, bringing the airport’s annual passenger capacity to 30 million, general director Mikhail Vasilenko said Tuesday, Interfax reported.
Terminal E, completed in December, will be linked to newly opened Terminal D, which was built by Aeroflot, Vasilenko said in Paris.
(Bloomberg)
RIA: Russian region doubles "car scrapping premium"http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100324/158293954.html
03:3924/03/2010
The government of Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Region on the Volga has doubled the premium paid to users of old cars who agree to have their car scrapped in line with a new disposal scheme, the governor's press service said.
Following the example of many Western countries, Russia launched a program on March 8 offering 50,000 rubles ($1,680) for the recycling of old vehicles in a bid to support Russia's ailing car industry.
A local program in the Nizhny Novgorod Region also offered 50,000 rubles for the scrapping, and will double that sum from April 1, on condition that old car owners buy
new cars made in the region. All premiums added up, altogether, an old car user living in the region will be able to buy a new car with a discount of more than $5,000.
The Russian disposal program's money is provided to those ready to have their 10-year-or-older car scrapped and buy a new one from an Industry and Trade Ministry-compiled list of over 60 Russian and foreign car brands produced in Russia.
Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko earlier said the weak point of the plan, that could theoretically expand to Russia's estimated 14 million 10-year-or-older cars, is the lack of a developed car scrapping infrastructure, with a mere 153 disposal stations having so far been licensed.
The scrapping experiment will take place in 49 Russian regions out of more than 80 and will last until November 1, 2010. Khristenko also said a smoothly functioning scrapping program should be ready by September.
The government has allocated some 10 billion rubles ($370 mln) to the program and predicts that some 200,000 new cars, mainly domestically produced Ladas, Chevrolets and Opels, will be sold in 2010 by more than 1,500 authorized dealers in line with the program.
A total of 7,000 cars were sold in line with the new scrapping scheme in the first week after the program was launched.
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, March 24 (RIA Novosti)
March 24, 2010 11:57
Interfax: Russia devising new police law – interior ministerhttp://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=153634
MOSCOW. March 24 (Interfax) - The Russian Interior Ministry has started formulating a new police law aimed at protecting citizens' rights and freedoms, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said.
"Upon analyzing all the existing problems, a decision supported by the country's leadership has been made on developing a new law on police, which would be new in its spirit. This should be a universal and socially-oriented legal act, whose main principle will be the protection of our citizens' rights and freedoms," Nurgaliyev said on Police Wave radio on Wednesday.
The philosophy of the new law is being formulated by "the best minds of this country, including scientists, senators, parliamentarians, public figures, human rights activists, and police officers themselves," Nurgaliyev said.
International experience is being analyzed as well, he added.
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Itar-Tass: Minister offers public to take part in preparing new law on police
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14948930
24.03.2010, 10.50
MOSCOW, March 24 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev offered the public to take an active part in preparing the new legislation on police. Speaking to Militseiskaya Volna radio on Wednesday, the minister noted that work was underway on the concept of the new law involving scientists, lawmakers, human rights activists and experienced police officers.
In drawing the new legislation, the authors are analyzing international experience. "We're hoping to finish the concept this spring, whereupon it will be put on the interior Ministry's website. Citizens will be able to familiarize themselves with it and express their opinions," Nurgaliyev said underlining that "each voice will be heard and taken into account."
"We know there'll be arguments and criticism, and are ready for it. The main thesis of the new law is not citizens for police, but police for citizens. A person should be sure that upon coming to a police station he will meet an officer who is open for talk, considerate and kind-hearted," the interior minister said.
The new legislation, along with a detailed list of the main kinds of police activities and rights and duties of police officers, will spell out a mechanism of the interior bodies' accountability to the population, Nurgaliyev said.
According to the interior minister, the norms of the old law "on police" have become obsolete and hamper their work.
The effective law "on police" was adopted in 1991, but at that time, it was another state, another time and responsibility, and any law must conform to the reality.
"This law has been effective for two decades, and become obsolete. For example, it states that if a person is in the street without IDs, police must bring him to a police station to establish his identity. It is unnecessary at present, car patrols have computers, while foot patrols have palmtops, so they can ascertain the identity of the citizen on the spot within a few minites, using police databases," Nurgaliyev said.
At the same time, he warned against the quick drawing of the new law, noting that it should not be prepared on the surge of emotions following the recent police violence incidents.
At of now, more than 200 laws and enactments regulate police activities. "This often provides the opportunity to adjust norms, and drawbacks are rectified by additional Interior Ministry resolutions," he said.
The draft concept of the new law will be prepared by April 1. Next, a special working group will take over the work on the legislation. It will be coordinated by the organizing committee, led by Deputy Interior Minister, State Secretary Sergei Bulavin.
Earlier, Nurgaliyev said that restructuring of police bodies was underway. The Interior Ministry designed an entirely new system to select, educate and train candidates for police work. Special attention is paid to the measures to improve the social protection of police personnel.
On December 24, 2009, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on measures to perfect the activities of interior bodies. The head of state called the document "the beginning of a serious reform of the Interior Ministry."
The first crucial move is to optimize the structure and personnel of the Interior Ministry.
The number of police should decrease by 20 percent within the next two years. Public security police will be funded only from the federal budget starting from 2012.
On January 12, Medvedev issued another decree setting the legislative groundwork for the functioning of police while taking into account the optimization of its structure.
The president said at a meeting of top Interior Ministry officials in February that he would personally supervise the reform of the Interior Ministry. His latest decisions are to cut the number of police personnel directly controlled by the Interior Ministry by half and enhance the responsibly of those who are staying.
Russia-IC: False bomb alarm stopped functioning of Yakutsk airport
http://www.russia-ic.com/news/show/9886/
24.03.2010
The airport of Yakutsk (Sakha Republic) did not function during two hours because of the false alarm. It was reported about a bomb in the building of the airport. The bomb-disposal experts, MES officers, representatives of the law-enforcement authorities and health professionals came to the airport after an anonym had called airport safety service
and reported about a bomb. 400 people who were in the airport and 50 airport employees were evoked from the building of the airport in a few minutes. The dog team and bomb-disposal experts have examined the airport but have not found anything looking like bomb. The airport of Yakutsk has returned to normal functioning.
RIA: Moscow to pay last respects to chief firefighterhttp://en.rian.ru/russia/20100324/158294847.html
06:5524/03/2010
Moscow will on Wednesday pay last respects to its chief firefighter who died Saturday while trying to save every possible survivor in a fire that engulfed a business center in the city's north.
Colonel Yevgeny Chernyshev, who had a day off, personally arrived at the site of the fire and was inside the building checking whether people were left there when part of the roof collapsed burying him. The fire embraced an area of 1,800 square meters and took five hours to extinguish. Six people were safely evacuated.
Colleagues have described Chernyshev, born in 1963, as an honest and just manager who was always ready to help if someone was in need. On his post, he took part in extinguishing more than 250 large fires. The top Moscow firefighter, who was married with a son, personally saved dozens of lives.
Oleg Mitvol, the prefect of Moscow's Northern District, said Saturday that the last fire inspection of the building took place in 2007 and a new check was scheduled for 2010.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered nationwide fire safety checks after a fire late last year killed over 150 people at a nightclub in the west Urals city of Perm.
MOSCOW, March 24 (RIA Novosti)
Moscow Times: New Grain Producer Lobby http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/new-grain-producer-lobby/402432.html
24 March 2010
Grain producers from 32 regions formed a new body to lobby for policies favorable to farmers, Siberian Agrarian Holding chairman Pavel Skurikhin said Tuesday at its first meeting.
While the Grain Producers’ Union will seek an alliance with the state-owned United Grain Company, it will not form partnerships with grain traders, Skurikhin said. Russia’s Grain Union, an existing lobby, represents traders and producers.
(Bloomberg)
Moscow Times: Vekselberg to Oversee Russia’s Silicon Valley http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/vekselberg-to-oversee-russias-silicon-valley/402422.html
24 March 2010By Irina Filatova
President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that he appointed billionaire Viktor Vekselberg as a chairman of the Russian section of the coordination council to oversee the creation of the Skolkovo innovation center.
The plan, which the Kremlin has pushed as its answer to Silicon Valley, has become a key point in Medvedev's program to diversify the economy through investment in innovation.
"Certain consultations regarding who exactly could handle such a job have been held. I've made a decision that Viktor Feliksovich Vekselberg will chair the Russian part of the coordination body we'll create," Medvedev said at the meeting of his commission to modernize the economy, held in the Siberian oil town of Khanty-Mansiisk.
The announcement came as Vekselberg, who was visiting the region with Medvedev and other business leaders, said TNK-BP planned to sell its stake in the Kovykta gas field to state-owned Rosneftegaz for $700 million to $900 million by the end of this year.
The decision ends a decade-long battle for control of the asset, which Gazprom had been seeking to acquire. (Story, Page 5).
To work effectively, the new innovation center in Skolkovo needs assets, but it also needs a distinct administration system, "which largely depends on us," Medvedev said, according to a transcript of comments posted on the Kremlin web site.
"We've started all this not for the sake of building a certain number of cottages or creating normal production conditions, laboratories there. That's all important, that all is infrastructure. The main thing is that people show up there," he said.
"The new technologies that we create are not toys for eggheads, they're something else entirely. They'll help cut costs, raise enterprises' revenue, improve labor conditions and
the environment," Medvedev said, adding that they would thereby improve the quality of life for all Russians, he said.
Given the scale of the project, Russian businessmen must be interested in creating the innovation center no less than the government, Medvedev said.
He did not specify why he selected Vekselberg, who has major holdings in Russia's power and energy sectors as well as a minority stake in United Company RusAl. The billionaire's holding company, Renova Group, is also the largest shareholder of Swiss technology conglomerate Oerlikon.
Vekselberg likely got the nod because of his reputation as an investor in technologies, particularly in Europe, said Sergei Guriev, rector at the New Economic School.
Among the other candidates for the position were Onexim Group chief Mikhail Prokhorov and Alfa Group chairman Mikhail Fridman, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Monday.
"Apparently, Viktor Vekselberg has provided the most promising concept for this research center's development," Guriev said, adding that Oerlikon might be among the foreign firms invited to join the innovation center.
"I'm sure that the question is not only Oerlikon, though. It's also a matter of real foreign business, including high-tech U.S. and European companies that don't want to be with Vekselberg now but that will want to invest in Russia," Guriev told The Moscow Times.
Vekselberg, 52, came in at No. 113 in Forbes magazine's worldwide ranking of billionaires earlier this month, with an estimated fortune of $6.4 billion. He is also the world's largest private collector of Faberge eggs, which he has repatriated to Russia.
Vekselberg also financed the return of 18 Orthodox church bells that had been at Harvard University since the Soviet government tried to sell them as scrap medal in 1930, ending a long-running dispute over their ownership.
The list of candidates to chair the international segment of the innovation center's coordination commission will be created in the next month or two, Vekselberg said.
"There's no candidate as of today, but there's an understanding that we want to see a competent person with experience commercializing innovations," he told reporters.
Medvedev repeated a pledge Tuesday to attract well-known scientists to work in the innovation hub, which the Kremlin hopes will help diversify Russia's economy away from raw materials.
Before inviting scientists to take part, the commission must find people who would solve organizational issues, Vekselberg said, adding that the creation of the legal framework for the project was also crucial.
"If we need to make legislative changes, we'll pass them," Medvedev said, ordering the government to propose possible options.
Medvedev said Friday that the centrally planned attempt to re-create California's innovation hub, Silicon Valley, would be built in the Moscow region town of Skolkovo. The selection, which would put it near the Skolkovo business school, raised some eyebrows for eschewing existing technology parks to construct a new supermodern town from scratch.
The new town will have focus on Medvedev's five priorities for modernization: energy, information technology, telecoms, biotechnology and nuclear technology. The project will be financed in part by dipping into the government's 10 billion ruble ($340 million) modernization and innovation budget, Vladislav Surkov, first deputy head of the Kremlin administration, said Friday.
Renova could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Moscow Times: Why Putin Isn’t Afraid of a Free Internet http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/why-putin-isnt-afraid-of-a-free-internet/402415.html
24 March 2010By Yulia Latynina
Have you ever wondered why the Kremlin does not control the Internet as China does?
China surpasses Russia on every conceivable front. After Russia suffered more than any other country in the Group of 20 during the crisis, economists rallied to rename BRIC as BIC, while China overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter.
During 10 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule, Russia collected more than $1.5 trillion selling oil and gas but didn’t build a single kilometer of new highway. In the same period, China built 5,000 to 6,000 kilometers of highways every year.
China is also the world leader in building nuclear power plants. It produces more wind energy than any other country. Most of the world’s computers are assembled in China, and China has become the world’s largest market for automobiles.
At the same time, China maintains far tighter control over the media than Russia does. A new Great Wall cuts off the Chinese Internet from the world. The scope of misinformation spewed out by China surpasses the wildest dreams of Russia’s state-
controlled Channel One television. For example, official Chinese propaganda claims that students attacked soldiers on Tiananmen Square.
Chinese authorities initially encouraged the quasi-religious Falun Gong sect, but when its membership outnumbered that of the Communist Party, they ruthlessly cracked down on the movement. The followers of Falun Gong are probably just as crazy as any other sect, but they are peaceful and have never been prohibited in other countries.
In contrast to China’s Communist Party, the Kremlin has nothing to brag about, so why doesn’t it enact tighter controls of the Internet to cover up negligence, incompetence and abuses?
The answer is that those 700 million peasants who play a crucial role in China’s modernization and economic boom are also the power base for any potential mass uprising. China’s ruling party is afraid that free speech on the Internet could cause the spark that mobilizes the peasants, transforming them into a huge and dangerous social force — just like a peaceful atom, which, under the right conditions, can unleash a nuclear blast.
But Putin doesn’t face this danger at all. Russia’s equivalent to the Chinese peasant is the archetypal Vanya the tractor driver. Vanya has been drinking for the past 30 years and uses his tractor mainly to get to the local store to buy another bottle of vodka, not to work his plot of land.
In contrast, the typical Chinese peasant is prepared to work, eat and sleep at the factory for five years straight to save up a few thousand dollars to open his own little kiosk selling fruit or other goods. Vanya the tractor driver will never vote for a liberal opposition candidate, nor will he take part in a protest or rebellion. Deep in his soul, he understands that he doesn’t deserve anything more in life than his beloved bottle of vodka.
The Communist Party of China is not worried about the occasional journalist or member of a sect who gains access to a free Internet, but it is deeply worried about the hundreds of millions of people who could be mobilized by these ideas and take their protests to the streets.
Putin, however, has absolutely nothing to fear. He knows that no storm raging over the Internet in reaction to the latest police shooting of innocent people can ever drive Vanya and the millions like him out of their constant state of inertia and onto the streets.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Spero News: 'You Wrote Nasty Things About Putin'http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=29565&t=%27You+Wrote+Nasty+Things+About+Putin%27
Russia Service contributor Julia Ioffe shares an interesting tale from Moscow.Tuesday, March 23, 2010Last week, RFE/RL Russia Service contributor Julia Ioffe was scheduled to interview Vladimir Churov, head of the Russian Central Elections Committee, on the show “Face to Face” along with Victor Hamraev from the Russian daily Kommersant. The topic of the show was the key regional elections
It's definitely flattering for a journalist to be so hated, but I was disappointed that I
wouldn't get to interview Churov.that were held the weekend before, a topic Julia had covered in an article for "Foreign Policy".
The morning of the show, she received a text from the show’s producer, stating: “Julia, unfortunately, everything’s changed. Churov, it turns out, knows you well from your publications and really doesn’t like you.” Apparently, Churov’s press person called RFE/RL and, with Churov audibly grumbling in the background, chewed out the show’s producer because Julia had written “nasty things about Putin.” The producer, to his credit, refused to replace her with someone friendlier and instead canceled the show.
When I asked her what it was like to be held in such high esteem by Russia's election officials, Julia responded: "It's definitely flattering for a journalist to be so hated, but I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to interview Churov. I was really looking forward to asking him why he came into the office in overall hunting fatigues the week before the election."
You can read her account of the experience on her 'Moscow Diaries' site.
-- Kelly Bjorklund
Moscow Times: Human Rights Activists Seek Western Protection http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/human-rights-activists-seek-western-protection/402427.html
24 March 2010By Nikolaus von Twickel
Despite President Dmitry Medvedev’s promises, the life of the country’s human rights workers is growing increasingly dangerous, making Western protection necessary, activists said Tuesday.
“Our people are being killed and injured and none of us knows who will be next,” veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva told a European Union conference in Moscow.
She said the fastest and most effective outside help was to give visas and political asylum to those whose safety was at risk. “We very much ask for such a mechanism to be set up,” she said.
Alexeyeva, who chairs the Moscow Helsinki Group, recalled that last year there were killings of a number of activists, including lawyer Stanislav Markelov, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anastasia Baburova and Ingush opposition leader Maksharip Aushev.
She also said it was important that the Russian government be pressed into implementing decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. She complained that Russia pays compensation to victims but rarely enacts changes to prevent future violations.
Conference participants accused the government of not fulfilling its obligation to protect human rights workers.
“The only protection they get is from society and from parts of the media,” said Andrei Vyurov, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.
Yury Dzhibladze, head of the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights, said nothing has improved since President Medvedev first acknowledged a year ago that a new policy toward human rights activists was needed. “Everything has just gotten worse,” he said.
Perhaps one reason for this is that many officials see human rights activists as enemies, Dzhibladze said. “They do not understand that it is the state’s duty to protect them,” he said.
But Alexander Zimin, a lecturer at the Interior Ministry’s Management Academy, said change was ongoing. “Serious steps are being taken to end the notion that they are enemies,” Zimin said.
He said the ministry has published in recent years two booklets on relations between police and civil society. He acknowledged, however, that the current situation is far from satisfactory for activists.
Academy teachers served as the only representatives from law enforcement agencies at the conference.
Marianna Maximovskaya, who chaired the conference at the EU Delegation’s headquarters, said officials from the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office had declined invitations.
Presidential human rights commissioner Ella Pamfilova told the conference that a lack of functioning democratic institutions and widespread corruption were the two main reasons why little progress has been achieved.
She also said the main risk for human rights activists did not come from law enforcement agencies. “The biggest danger is from politicians, from their spin doctors, and from people with criminal links,” she said.
The situation is most precarious in the North Caucasus, especially in Chechnya, where rights campaigners Natalya Estemirova and Zarema Sadulayeva were killed by unknown attackers last year.
Allison Gill, head of the Moscow office for Human Rights Watch, said it was increasingly difficult to obtain good research and analysis from the region.“We have to review very carefully anything we get from the North Caucasus because there are fewer sources,” she told The Moscow Times on the sidelines of the conference.
Heidi Hautala, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Subcommittee, said EU institutions must cooperate more to protect activists in Russia.
In a message read out at the conference, the Finnish lawmaker said the idea of a strategic partnership with Russia, popular with some European leaders, should not be employed under the current circumstances. “This is only possible if both partners share common values,” she said.
Hautala acknowledged that EU member states “sadly disagree on priorities” with Moscow. “We must develop strategies to bring human rights to the core of EU-Russian relations,” she said.
Moscow Times: Luzhkov's Powerful Deputy Caught in Corruption Probe http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/luzhkovs-powerful-deputy-caught-in-corruption-probe/402421.html
24 March 2010By Nabi Abdullaev and Alexander Bratersky
Federal investigators announced Tuesday that they were investigating Mayor Yury Luzhkov's powerful deputy Alexander Ryabinin on suspicion of corruption.
Ryabinin heads City Hall's Control Committee, which authorizes construction permits and land sales, and he oversees procurements and investment for the city administration.
Ryabinin is the most senior Moscow official to have been targeted by investigators since Luzhkov took the reins of the city in 1992, and political analysts said the case appeared to be an attempt by the Kremlin to unseat the mayor.
An Investigative Committee spokesman told The Moscow Times that the criminal case was opened against Ryabinin on suspicion of abuse of office Monday. Ryabinin remains
free, and his legal status is that of a suspect, the spokesman said, declining further comment.
According to a statement posted on the committee's web site, Ryabinin is accused of pressuring an unidentified Moscow businessman into handing over a nonresidential property to Ryabinin's daughter. Ryabinin is suspected of threatening to block the approval of a construction project that the businessman had filed with his Control Committee, the statement said. Sale papers for the property covering more than 200 square meters in a building in central Moscow were forged, and no money was paid to the businessman, it said.
Ryabinin, 50, joined City Hall in 2005 and was appointed deputy mayor two years later. He also served on an anti-corruption commission created by Luzhkov in 2008. In June, Ryabinin was also appointed to head Moskomsintez, a company established by City Hall to buy land from developers for the city's needs.
“He has played a major role in the distribution of land plots in Moscow,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, head of the Yabloko party and a former Moscow City Duma deputy.
If charged and convicted of abuse of office, Ryabinin faces up to three years in prison.
City Hall's press service could not be reached for comment on the investigation Tuesday evening.
Luzhkov, 73, has been hit by a string of scandals over the past year, including several orchestrated by the federal government.
Last June, law enforcement officials used smuggling charges to close Europe's largest retail market, Cherkizovsky, controlled by businessman Telman Ismailov, who is believed to be close to Luzhkov.
Two months later, the head of City Hall's Advertising Committee, Vladimir Makarov, was charged with abuse of office and placed in detention for several weeks. The case against him is ongoing.
Before Ryabinin, Makarov was the highest-ranking City Hall official to come under investigation.
In October, Interior Ministry investigators conducted searches in City Hall's housing department in a fraud case.
Then President Dmitry Medvedev — apparently taking aim at Luzhkov and other veteran governors who have established authoritarian regimes in their regions — said late last year that he would not allow the governors to stay past three terms in office.
The Kremlin had no immediate comment about the investigation late Tuesday.
The crackdown against Ryabinin appears to be aimed against Luzhkov, but the mayor is extremely resilient politically and would survive this blow easily, said Stanislav Belkovsky, an independent political analyst.
Luzhkov — who doesn't belong to the current group of decision-makers brought to power by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and who mounted a strong challenge to the Kremlin in 1999 — has received such signals for years but always managed to retain his grip on power, Belkovsky said.
Tatyana Stanovaya, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, said the Kremlin has decided that Luzhkov must leave, and negotiations were going on between him and the federal authorities on the terms of his departure.
The case against Ryabinin could represent a public manifestation in the struggle between the mayor and a Kremlin faction seeking his departure, she said.
Julia Ioffe
The Moscow Diaries
Mar. 23 2010 — 3:02 pm
True/Slant: Hillary Clinton talks with the Russian Larry King
http://trueslant.com/juliaioffe/
Last night at midnight, Russia finally got to see Vladimir Pozner, its Larry King, sit down with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (The show is normally live, but this was taped right before Hillary’s Friday night departure from Moscow.)
Pozner is a fairly controversial figure in Russia, who is seen by the intelligentsia as a Kremlin mercenary. Born abroad to a Russian father and a French mother, he attended Stuyvesant High School in New York. The English he perfected there served him well: he spent much of his career (and the Cold War) as the voice of Radio Moscow, which, like Voice of America, beamed news about Russia into the West. (He was also a regular on Nightline in the 80s, and, in the 1990s, worked regularly with Phil Donahue.)
Sitting in a studio that resembled a wood-panneled amphitheater, subjected to Who-Wants-to-be-a-Millionaire lighting and camera work, the pair sometimes looked like a Western Cold War propaganda reel: the peppy, honest, idealistic blonde facing the hunched and scowling bald man with the precariously perched glasses.
But the exchange, which took place in English, was mostly friendly. For an hour, Hillary fielded fielded questions from Pozner and his viewers on motherhood, her Iraq vote,
feminism, the politics of double standards, as well as her decision to work for a former rival. Asked who her political role models were, she said her husband first, followed by the hero of every politician who wants to give the predictable and inoffensive answer, Nelson Mandela.
There was, of course, the occasional idealistic wiggle from Hillary — she wouldn’t think twice, she said, about choosing to be mother of the bride over Secretary of State — and the much-discussed Hillary laugh.
There were also Pozner’s amazingly Russian questions. Like, how is Kosovo different from Abkhazia or South Ossetia? (No mention, of course, of Chechnya.) Or, who controls the American media? (If Russian media is overtly controlled by the Kremlin, ergo…)
The best moment came when Pozner asked — second part, 4:20 — “Is the Monroe Doctrine still alive in your mind?”
This article appears in the March 26, 2010 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Executive Intelligence Review: London's 'Our Men' in Moscow Keep Poisoning Russian Policyhttp://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/3712london_in_moscow.html
by Rachel Douglas
[A PDF version of this article is available here]
... from the middle of the 1980s on, the leading forces in Russia, today, were trained and directed by British intelligence circles, largely inside London, itself.... These characters, like Chubais—not only Gorbachov, but Chubais and others, who are part of the British school of treason, from a Russian patriotic standpoint, ... are behind the major problems we have today."
Lyndon LaRouche, webcast of March 13, 2010
Anatoli Chubais, the current CEO of Russia's state-owned corporation Rosnano, spelled it out himself, in an interview published March 3 in the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, about the events of 1991. He was asked about the urgent consultations that took place in a Moscow suburb, in late September 1991, to which Chubais was summoned by the late Yegor Gaidar. It quickly became clear that Gaidar was to be the prime minister of the new government of independent Russia—the Soviet Union being in the process of disintegration, after an abortive coup attempt the previous month—and the discussion was about the economic policy to be implemented.
"Was an evaluation made," Forbes asked Chubais, "of what the impact of the reforms would be? I mean, forecasts of the extent to which production and real incomes would collapse, and how high prices would rise."
Chubais replied:
We didn't have to make any special estimates, because this was one of the fundamental scientific topics we had been working on for the previous ten years. So, we knew very well what the impact was going to be: the real cost of the reforms. We had even written about it, including in a famous article co-authored by myself and [Sergei] Vasilyev. It described the main conflicts and problems which would inevitably occur. First, we presented this at a seminar in Padua [Italy], then we published it. It provided a sober and tough description of the inevitable adverse effects of the transformations which had to be made.
Setting aside Chubais's sophistry regarding the inevitability of the "shock therapy" deregulation and privatization policy, and its hideous consequences, what's true in that statement is that the Gaidar government had its plans set in advance, thanks to a nearly ten-year process of preparation. Foremost among the foreign sponsors of that process was the late Lord Harris of High Cross, head of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. The IEA is an arm of the infamous Mont Pelerin Society, the British economic warfare unit founded in 1947 by London School of Economics Prof. Friedrich von Hayek. Mont Pelerin's mission: to use the free-trade "liberalism" of 18th- and 19th-Century Britain as a bludgeon against nation-states, which had been strengthened during the mobilization for World War II. Three decades after Mont Pelerin's launch, the IEA became the think-tank that cranked out the core policies of "Thatcherism," named for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. That radical privatization/deregulation/free-trade agenda savaged the U.K. itself, and much of the rest of the world, beginning at the end of the 1970s.
In 1983-91, the IEA and its Centre for Research into Communist Economies (CRCE) conducted a series of seminars, at various venues around the world, for young economists from Eastern Europe and Russia. On Aug. 23, 1991, the "Diary" column in the London Times showcased their special relationship with these Russians: "The free market gurus and think-tanks that helped redraw the economic map of Britain during the 1980s," wrote the Times, "are planning an ideological invasion of the Soviet Union, in the belief that the failed coup [of Aug. 21-22] has rendered the empire ripe for a dose of Thatcherism.... The Thatcherites believe that the events of the last few days have created the perfect new laboratory to test their ideas." Interviewed about the monthly luncheons he would be hosting for "free-marketeers and Soviet economists," Lord Harris told the Times, "We criticized [then Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachov in the past for not reforming fast enough. Now the pace will be accelerated and our think-tanks can play a key role."
Harris's project, and the parallel patronage of the Rothschild family's George Soros, shaped the group of "young reformers," who ran economic policy under Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1991-98. Harris called them "our men." As the Soviet bloc
splintered, the Mont Pelerin Society-groomed economists seized the opening. Their first policy submission was the notorious 500 Days Plan for a leap to the "free market," drafted in 1990 by young economists, including Boris Fyodorov and Leonid Grigoryev from the Gaidar-Chubais group. A year later, in September-November 1991, the Russian institute of Gaidar and his protégé Vladimir Mau nearly folded, because most of its staff entered the government. As acting prime minister in the first Yeltsin Cabinet, Gaidar promptly implemented the "shock" decontrol of prices, beginning with the catastrophic looting of Russian industry and living standards.
The horror story of 1990s Russia has been told many times, including in two books published in English by EIR, Sergei Glazyev's Genocide: Russia and the New World Order (1999) and The Anatomy of Russian Capitalism, by Prof. Stanislav Menshikov (2007). The looting of the country reached a high point in 1996-98, when a Ponzi scheme of Russian short-term government bonds, called GKOs, became a magnet for hot-money flows from all over the world, in the wake of the savaging of Asian currencies by Soros's and other hedge funds. During frenzied Summer 1998 attempts to keep the GKO bubble from blowing out, Chubais handled the Russian government's dealings with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, securing pledges of $22 billion in help. From the outside, then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers was a key player.
They failed, Russia defaulted, the stock market crashed by 75% on the year and the ruble by two-thirds, and some of the Russian nouveaux riches lost their fortunes. Bad derivatives bets related to the Russian bonds brought down the Connecticut-based Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund, nearly leading to a worldwide meltdown right then. One would suppose that Chubais's services were no longer required, as veteran intelligence figure and economist Yevgeni Primakov took Russia's reins of government in September 1998.
But, Chubais managed to hang on to another job he had acquired in April 1998, as the GKO crisis ripened. Fired in March 1998 as first deputy prime minister, along with Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin, he became CEO of the national electric power utility, United Energy Systems. During the next decade, while arranging the break-up of UES and privatization of its components, Chubais restyled himself as a "liberal imperialist," borrowing that catch-phrase from Britain's Tony Blair.
And the legacy of the London-steered experiment in Russia runs deeper than its visible extravagance of the 1990s. In a 2001 interview, published for the first time by journalist Alexander Gentelev only in January of this year, Chubais explained: Until the 1996 re-election of Yeltsin, "privatization in Russia was really not an economic process. It was addressing objectives of a completely different scope. Few people understood that at the time, especially in the West." The goal, Chubais elaborated, was political. He presented that goal as "destroying communism" through creating an irreversible attachment to private property ownership in Russia: "We knew that every factory sold, was a nail in the coffin of a communist. Whether it was expensive, or cheap, or free, or with a surcharge—
that was question number 20. Number 20! While question number 1 was just this: each private property owner who appeared in Russia meant irreversibility. Irreversibility!"
While the majority of the workers and scientists by whose labor and innovation Soviet assets had been created sank into poverty, Russia's newly minted "private property owners" quickly melded their enormous holdings into existing, worldwide, London- and offshore-based finance.
Some of the members of the Gaidar-Chubais team had earlier departed to the private sector, joining the ranks of would-be "irreversible" private-property owners, some of them on an obscenely huge scale. Others, however, filtered into the institutions of Russian policy-making and continued to hold key positions throughout the first decade of the new century, even as President Vladimir Putin sought to regroup the Russian economy and shift it away from its addiction to raw materials exports. Today, not only are key personnel still on the scene (see below, "Where are 'Our Men' Now?"), along with a whole new generation of people who rose under their tutelage, but it is also evident that the axioms, institutions, and modes of operation, established for the Russian economy by the London-trained "young reformers," have not loosened their grip. For that reason, Russia urgently requires, as much as any nation does, LaRouche's proposed bankruptcy reorganization, under Glass-Steagall principles, of the entire London-centered international system of speculative monetary flows, on whose behalf Russia has been looted.
Now read our documentation: the late Lord Harris's own words, and those of his confederates, describing what they had set in motion the previous decade. Then, we shall touch on how London's "our men" emerged in the late-Soviet years of rule by Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachov, and take a look at where they are, and what they are doing, today.
The remainder of this article is available to subscribers.
Chatham House: Russia and the Arctic: Parachuting Inhttp://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/twt/archive/view/-/id/2012/
Roger Howard, April 2010
The World Today, Volume 66, Number 4
Russia's armed forces are expected to try to seize international headlines in the coming weeks by dropping a team of specially trained parachutists over theNorth Pole. Moscow claims to be 'peacefully' commemorating the first airborne landing there made by two Soviet scientists, Vitaly Volovich and Andrei Medvedev, in May 1949. But much more is at stake: questions of power and energy.
The Kremlin regards the high north as part of its national sphere of influence and the parachute drop is intended to send that clear and simple message to both the outside
world and the Russian public. This was also the motive behind a deep water mission in August 2007 by two miniature submarines that descended to the depths of the Arctic Ocean to take geological samples fromt he sea bed and leave behind ametal Russian flag.
Russia may want to rely on shows of military force to stake its claim to areas of the High North for the simple reason that its legal case, under international law, may prove less than watertight.
Although it has automatic sovereign rights over a belt of sea that stretches for up to two hundred nautical miles from its coasts, it can also potentially stake a claim over a much larger area. But to do this, it must demonstrate that 'the natural prolongation of its land territory' - its outer continental shelf - extends beyond that two hundred-mile limit.
If it can do so, then Russia could claim sovereign rights over any natural resources found in an area reaching up to three hundred and fifty miles from its coasts. This would extend all the way fromits northern-most territory, the Franz Josef Islands in the Barents Sea, to theNorth Pole.
A CASE OF EVIDENCE
But proving that its continental shelf stretches beyond the two hundred-mile limit can present any country with a daunting scientific challenge. Russian experts have spent years trying to demonstrate that their continental shelf merges with the Lomonosov Ridge, a massive underground rock formation akin to a submerged mountain range, which runs under the Arctic Ocean.
But when in 2001 Russia tried unsuccessfully to persuade the United Nations of its claim, it was asked to resubmit its case with more compelling evidence. It is quite possible that Russian geologists have failed to find the convincing scientific data that the UN requires: many experts remain sceptical that the submarine expedition, for example, would have yielded any important new information.
In this scenario, Moscow would want to rely on shows of military force instead of legal mechanisms to warn the outside world away from a region it regards as its own backyard. Such exercises and bellicose statements risk fuelling considerable international mistrust with the four other states that border the Arctic Ocean: the United States, Canada, Norway andDenmark (Greenland).
Finding the geological evidence couldprove tobe a very lengthy and perhaps ultimately unrewarding process, and the Kremlin might fear that, in the intervening period, other countries could step into the void. Even if it does find such evidence, the UN could conceivably take years to deliver its verdict.
Russia knows that, unless it can claim these waters as its own, then they will remain an area of 'high seas' over which it would enjoy the same rights as any other country. Moscow is a signatory of the main legal text on this point, the 1982 Convention on the
Law of the Sea, and this states that any resources found in 'the Area' of high seas are 'the common heritage of mankind'.
TOMORROW'S ENERGY
Although there are a number of reasons why Moscow might want to assert its legal claim over areas of 'no man's land' - or rather 'noman's sea' - in the Arctic Ocean, one of the most important concerns the region's natural resources. In recent years there has been a great deal of speculation about supposedly huge quantities of oil and natural gas; one 2008 survey 'guestimated' that it holds as much as thirteen percent of the world's undiscovered oil and thirty percent of its undiscovered natural gas. Although these figures are highly speculative, Russia knows that they might potentially even understate what really lies there: huge areas of the East Siberian, Chuckhi and Barents Sea, for example, have not even been subject to proper geological assessment.
Although the Arctic does have some attractive 'niche basins' where deposits are accessible and could be tapped into with existing infrastructure, exploiting resources elsewhere would not be commercially viable. This is partly because such reserves are likely to be in deep waters remote from potential markets, but also because the harsh climate would make extraction difficult and dangerous. This is why, for example, the Shtokman field - Russia's massive natural gas complex in the Barents Sea - has been subject to so many cost overruns and delays since it was first discovered in 1988.
Over the coming decades it seems quite possible that the climatic conditions in parts of the High North will ameliorate, while technological progress will open up these remote areas for proper exploitation in the same way that energy companies are now drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caspian Sea and elsewhere at depths that were once considered unthinkable.
Because its economy is highly dependent on the export of oil and natural gas, which make up around 65 percent of its foreign exchange earnings, Russia is also anxious to secure future supplies in case existing reserves become commercially exhausted. At very least it would want to prevent other countries exploiting deposits it could, potentially, call its own.
This might potentially allow foreign rivals to undermine Russia's grip on the supply of natural gas, in particular, to western Europe. Acquiring new natural resources could also give Russia's leaders a form of political leverage over other countries whose major oil producers could be lured with promises of participation in what could be highly lucrative energy contracts.
Energy interests apart, the Kremlin is likely to view the airborne drop as a way of asserting Russia's national prestige before both domestic and international audiences. The Arctic has long been highly symbolic of national glory and heroism, and President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putinmight now wish to exploit this for their own political ends.
In particular, by identifying with the 1949 airborne landings, the present regime in Moscow may be trying to appeal to the patriotic instincts of the Russian public. By dropping soldiers over the Pole, the Kremlin will be hoping to assert these perceived national interests, reiterating and reviving the 2007 message of the two miniature submarines. The images of the airdropmay prove just as powerful and enduring.
Roger Howard, Author, Arctic Gold Rush: The New Race for Tomorrow's Natural Resources, Continuum, 2009
Russia Today: Principled childless gain ground in Russia http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-03-24/principled-childless-russia.html/print
24 March, 2010, 08:27
More and more young people prefer not to have children out of principle – simply because they do not need them.
Modeled after an American idea, Russia's online Childfree Community has thousands of members. Of different ages and sexes, they are brought together by their rebellion against social norms. They can have children, but simply do not want to.
Sergey Leonov is a successful cameraman. He spends his spare time working on designing clothes.
“Having children is about sacrifice, and I don't want to sacrifice doing what I like,” Sergey explains his choice. “When I told the women I was dating that I didn't want children, they thought I was joking. But then it created rifts, and many left me because of it.”
But the stance goes beyond an internet community. Over the last thirty years Russia has suffered from an extremely low birth rate. Over the last ten years, economic troubles and political uncertainty have been blamed. Although the 2000s have seen fast economic growth and relative political stability, the birth rate has not bounced back. So, at least to some extent, attitudes must be to blame.
Sociologists say that Russian women are following a Western trend by wanting to postpone childbirth. But many Russians are also reluctant to have children because they are often expected to look after and house them well into their twenties – longer than in many other countries.
But, for the most principled childless, there is a deeper cause.
“People treat others as they were once treated themselves. Many of those who don't want children simply did not feel needed when they were growing up,” says psychologist Anna Kartashova.
But although there may be several reasons for not having children there is definitely only one outcome.
Earthtimes: Russia!: Former Intelligence Operative Builds $150,000 Stereo Systems Out of His Basement http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/russia-former-intelligence-operative-builds,1218377.shtml
NEW YORK, NY -- 03/24/10 -- What's the former Russian intelligence officer to do when he quits his job and sits at home 15 miles outside of Moscow? Build and sell $150,000 high end stereo systems, according to Russia! magazine, which published the story about Alexei Semin on its blog, www.readrussia.com.
"...Alexei Semin builds stereos in his basement -- by hand, from scratch -- using antique vacuum tubes he finds scattered throughout the Internet tube sound aficionado universe. He is part of the renaissance of tube sound, or sound systems based not around solid-state transistors -- tiny, cheap, plastic things in your home stereo -- but around vacuum tubes, known as 'lamps' in Russian, because that's what they look like. Unlike transistor amplifiers, which replaced tubes commercially in the late 1960s, tube-based amps are bulky, fragile black holes of energy that are hard to build and are therefore very, very expensive," -- writes Russia!.
"It's actually quite typical of this country," says Ilya Merenzon, the magazine's publisher. "A man quits his job and makes amazing products out of his basement. This is how the most amazing things are produced there anyway. For decades, people in Russia were trained to fix by hand whatever terrible products the factories were producing. Now, people can assemble cars our of vacuum cleaners (true story!) and build best stereos in the world."
Semin's company, SALabs, produces about 20 systems per year and most of them are sold in Russia. Each stereo system is custom-made and can cost from $20,000 to $150,000.
Russia!, an English-language publication devoted to the most original coverage of people, trends, ideas and events taking place in or around Russia, is available in print as well as online at www.readrussia.com.
Russia Today: 24 March, 2010 in Russian Newspapershttp://rt.com/Top_News/Press/eng.htmlTrud: Brain-drain has been reversed
High-tech specialists are returning to Russia from the United States and Europe
Ekaterina Staroverova, Elena Goncharova Due to the financial crisis in Europe, Asia, and the United States, projects which employed Russian programmers are being shut down. IT specialists are not left with much choice but to return to Russia.A “brain-gain” has begun in the IT and high-tech spheres. IT specialists, who left Russia 10-15 years ago or very recently to work on a certain project, are coming back.Considering the lack of good IT specialists in Russia, employers are welcoming the returnees. Today, a single IT job opening gets a maximum of three responses. The country clearly lacks domestic specialists.
Ivestiya: Marxism - “Crisis-ism” The global economic crisis made people lose interest in economic literature (its sales have recently plummeted), but it did encourage people to search for its explanations in the classics -- Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital”. In early 2008, the publication’s sales in Europe rose sharply. Russia followed -- in early 2009, domestic bookstore customers had suddenly began asking for the monumental writing of the founder of Marxism, and as soon as it became available - it sold out in no time. Now, shorter, adapted versions of the publication have appeared, and they are still very much in demand.
Natalia Kochetkova In 2006, before anyone had even thought about a global economic crisis, Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov told me about the time when a student at the George Mason University, where he taught Russian literature until 2004, approached him and confessed that she is a Marxist. The respectful man, who was into his sixties, urged her to renounce her beliefs. But, in the last couple of years of the economic crisis, Marx’s teachings not only have not been forgotten, but have, to the contrary, gained more popularity. In recent times, French President Nikolas Sarkozy, Germany’s Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck and even Pope Benedict XVI have been noted to be rereading “Das Kapital”.
Nezavisimaya: A special group has been created in Tbilisi to fight against Saakashvili From whom does the Georgian opposition expect to receive assistance?
Yury Simonyan On Monday, during a special conference in Tbilisi, Georgia’s opposition forces passed an appeal to the international democratic community, seeking its help in putting an end to the authoritative regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, who led the country to a catastrophic state. Considering Europe’s indifferent attitude toward the country’s domestic processes and the recommendation, recently made by US Vice President Joe Biden -- to wait for the constitutional elections -- Georgia’s opposition risks being heard by no one else other than Russia.
Reuters: PRESS DIGEST - Russia - March 24http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE62N0E220100324
Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:11am GMT
MOSCOW, March 24 (Reuters) - The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
KOMMERSANT
www.kommersant.ru
- Ukraine is in talks with Russia's Gazprom (GAZP.MM) to lower the price it pays for gas imports to $180 per cubic metre, the daily reports.
- Russia's economy ministry plans to introduce 5 percent export duty for potash in 2010, the paper writes.
VEDOMOSTI
www.vedomosti.ru
- A popular game on a Russian social networking website has made profit of $20 million in one year, the paper says.
- The paper runs an interview with the chief Executive Officer of Alcatel-Lucent, Ben Verwaayen.
- TNK-BP (TNBPI.RTS) aims to sell the Kovykta gas field to Rosneftegaz, a state holding company with stakes in oil sector leader Rosneft and gas export monopoly Gazprom, for $700-900 million, the paper says.
GAZETA
www.gzt.ru
- The government of Moscow has abandoned the idea of decorating the city with posters of Joseph Stalin for the 65th anniversary of victory in World War Two, the daily reports.
VREMYA NOVOSTEI
www.vremya.ru
- Russia's government will consider lowering duties on imported cars to 25 from 30 percent, the paper writes.
KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA
- Russia will spend 13 billion roubles ($440.4 million) to support small businesses in 2010, the paper writes.
Moscow Times: Today in VedomostiIssue 4356. Last Updated: 03/24/2010
Law Sees Compensation for Legal BureaucracyBy Anastasia KornyaPresident Dmitry Medvedev has brought a bill to the State Duma that would see compensation paid out in cases of a violation of a citizen's right to a trial within a reasonable time, or when legal rulings are not promptly implemented.
'The Happy Farmer' Reaps RewardsBy Anastasia Golitsyna
One of the most popular social network games, "The Happy Farmer," brought Yekaterinburg-based i-Jet $20 million in less than a year, which is a record for the Russian Internet.
Google Calls Off Search in ChinaBy Timofei Dzyadko and Tatyana Seiranyan
Google has abolished censorship in the Chinese version of its search engine. Now all search requests on Google.cn are forwarded to its Hong Kong site, but China can independently filter search queries coming from the mainland.
Barentsnova: Sunday, Russia goes an hour aheadhttp://barentsnova.com/news/show/1662
2010-03-24 Sunday, March 28 Russian clocks are an hour advanced for daylight time saving.
Russia enters “summer time” for the period of March 28 to October 31. The clocks will jump one hour ahead at 2 a.m. on Sunday.
The tradition of adjusting hours backwards and forward is much of discomfort to many people though supported by energy savers. Yet, earlier in 2008 the bill of this kind was rejected by Russian Duma due to the lack of scientifically-proven evidence on health-harming effects of this procedure.
Russia is now on the way to cancel the custom of daylight time saving; the relevant bill was submitted to Russian Duma in November 2009 with a hope to be adopted and approved in 2011.This time, the bill is more likely to pass through the Duma readings since President Medvedev personally doubts the benefits of this energy-saving campaign.
Itar-Tass: Around 200 settlements under threat of floods in southern Russia
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14949208&PageNum=0
24.03.2010, 11.51
KRASNODAR, March 24 (Itar-Tass) - A total of 21 municipalities are situated in a zone under threat of spring floods in the Krasnodar region where around 200 villages might be flooded, First Vice- governor Dzhambulat Khatuov said on Wednesday.
Spring time in the Kuban region is known as a surprise season which is not always pleasant. Last year a spell of ground frosts in April nearly ruined the harvest there. Many people remember the 2002 spring floods when dozens of thousands of households submerged in water as a result of three powerful flood cycles.
Around 700 million roubles have been allocated from budgetary funds to protect settlements against devastating floods. Thorough inspections of coastal fortifications and dikes have been conducted since the beginning of the year. A network of control hydraulic posts has been considerably enlarged, and a system of notification of the population about emergencies is being improved now. The Kuban region has been provided with reserve materials and special facilities for elimination of after-effects of floods; the region might need them in case of unfavorable flood situations.
Previous weather cataclysms taught a good lesson to the Kuban region. Now that the threat of floods has returned the region is prepared to use its previous experience to prevent new tragedies, Krasnodar regional governor Alexander Tkachev told Itar-Tass. A center for managing crisis situations has been created on the basis of the emergencies ministry to render assistance to heads of regional administrations.
National Economic Trends
Business, Energy or Environmental regulations or discussions
2010-03-24 07:32 Reuters: Russian markets -- Factors to watch on March 24
http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7807845&subject=markets&action=article
MOSCOW, March 24 (Reuters) - Here are events and news stories that could move Russian markets on Wednesday.
You can reach us on: +7 495 775 1242
STOCKS CALL (Contributions to [email protected]):
OTP Bank: Decline in crude prices and negative sentiment on Asian bourses might influence trading after Russian markets open.
Veles Capital: "There are no serious suppositions for growth ... and on contrary the technical factors are speaking for some dropping."
EVENTS (All times GMT):
MOSCOW - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meets Qatari counterpart Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani. 1200.
MOSCOW - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meets Qatari counterpart Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani. 0700.
MOSCOW - Cabinet presidium meeting. 1500.
MOSCOW - The Finance Ministry to offer 12.2 billion roubles of 2012 OFZ bonds at a top-up auction.
IN THE PAPERS:
Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg has been nominated by President Dmitry Medvedev to head the creation of the Skolkovo innovation centre - the Kremlin's ambition to diversify the country's economy away from oil and gas, the business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
Vekselberg is the head of the investment Renova holding and a TNK-BP shareholder. Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service, following a request from Russian banks, will examine whether the central bank's recommendation to lower deposit rates does not violate the law on competitiveness, the daily Vedomosti reported.
TOP STORIES IN RUSSIA AND THE CIS:
TOP NEWS:
COMPANIES/MARKETS:
Wimm-Bill-Dann promises progressive dividends
Russian Railways to sell 7yr benchmark Eurobond
ECONOMY/POLITICS:
Rouble recovery too modest for new peaks
Putin pledges support to Russia small business
Cold Russian winter to blame for weak data
C.bank provisions tightening positive-Moody's
ENERGY:
Ukraine govt draws blank in first gas talks
LUKOIL CEO says Conoco confirms share sale
TNK-BP co-owner eyes Kovykta for $700-900 mln OGK-3 to boost investment, may pay dividend
COMMODITIES:
Petropavlovsk seals China for iron projects
Russia mulls 5 pct potash export duty
Grain producers form a new industry lobby
MARKETS CLOSE/LATEST:
RTS 1,530.0 +0.3 pctMSCI Russia 824.5 -1.8 pctMSCI Emerging Markets 996.3 +2.1 pct
Russia 30-year Eurobond yield: 4.882/4.853 pct
EMBI+ Russia 157 basis points over
Rouble/dollar 29.4700
Rouble/euro 39.9500
NYMEX crude $81.58 +$0.18ICE Brent crude $80.37 +$0.5
Bloomberg: OAO Lukoil, OAO Rosneft, Polyus Gold: Russian Equity Preview http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aX2QaXE6zUvg
By Anna Shiryaevskaya
March 24 (Bloomberg) -- The following shares may have unusual price changes in Russian trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses and prices are from the previous close unless otherwise noted.
The 30-stock Micex Index declined 0.5 percent to 1,410.61. The dollar-denominated RTS Index fell 0.04 percent to 1,524.96.
OAO Lukoil (LKOH RX): Lukoil is due to report fourth- quarter earnings. Russia’s biggest non-state oil producer fell 1.6 percent to 1,663.78 rubles.
OAO Rosneft (ROSN RX): Crude oil rose for a second day as U.S. equities advanced and on forecasts that a government report will show U.S. fuel inventories declined. Crude oil for May delivery rose 29 cents to $81.89 a barrel at 2:19 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Russia’s biggest oil producer declined 0.2 percent to 223.99 rubles.
OAO Polyus Gold (PLZL RX): Gold futures rose from a three- week low as the dollar pared gains, boosting the appeal of the precious metal as an alternative asset. Gold futures for April delivery gained $3.80, or 0.4 percent, to $1,103.30 an ounce at 2:14 p.m. on the Comex in New York. Shares in the country’s biggest producer of the metal dropped 2.1 percent to 1,471.96 rubles.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anna Shiryaevskaya in Moscow at [email protected]
Last Updated: March 23, 2010 22:00 EDT
Bloomberg: PIK Group May Sell $500 Million of Shares, Kommersant Reports http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aEndU4AvlivY
By Anastasia Ustinova
March 24 (Bloomberg) -- PIK Group, a Russia property developer, may sell shares to raise about $500 million, Kommersant said, citing an unidentified person familiar with the plans.
The proceeds will be used in part to repay more than $270 million to Nomos Bank, which acquired the developer’s debt last year from Russian bailout lender Vnesheconombank, or VEB. PIK founder Yuri Zhukov failed to agree to restructure the debt this year and may lose a 12.5 percent stake to Nomos, the newspaper said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anastasia Ustinova at [email protected]
Last Updated: March 24, 2010 01:23 EDT
Moscow Times: Energy Ministry Reduces 2015 Power Forecast http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/energy-ministry-reduces-2015-power-forecast/402402.html
24 March 2010By Anna Peretolchina and Yelena Mazneva / VedomostiThe Energy Ministry is rewriting its GOELRO-2 power plan, under which 20 percent to 25 percent less capacity will be built by 2015 than had been expected when the document was created four years ago.
The difference, of 61 to 81 gigawatts, is equivalent to three times RusHydro's capacity or six times that of Mosenergo.
The ministry corrected its forecast to show that Russia's overall power capacity should reach 236.8 to 245.1 gigawatts by 2015, depending on various scenarios for power consumption.
The information was in the Audit Chamber's report for January, which looked into the work of the System Operator and the Energy Ministry. A copy was obtained by Vedomosti.
Russia's current power capacity is 211.85 gigawatts, meaning that in the coming five years, at least 25 to 33 gigawatts should be built, not including the replacement of capacity that must be replaced. Overall construction of new units, including replacements, should be 31.2 to 40.9 gigawatts for 2011 to 2015, the Audit Chamber report said.
That is far less than was planned under the main document on the matter, which is frequently referred to as GOELRO-2, after the Soviet plan for the power sector. That plan says that by 2015, the capacity of Russia's stations should be 297.5 to 326.2 gigawatts, with an annual forecast for demand growth of 4.1 percent to 5.2 percent.
Under the revised figures, 60.7 to 81.1 gigawatts less capacity will be needed, not counting replacements. By comparison, the country's largest power generator, RusHydro, has 25.4 gigawatts of capacity. The largest regional generator, Mosenergo, has about 12 gigawatts.
The GOELRO-2 plan was created in 2006 and 2007 and is well out of date, something that officials have repeatedly conceded. Then-Deputy Energy Minister Vyacheslav Sinyugin said last year that the amount of new capacity built by 2015 could be reduced by half or two-thirds, but details had not been released.
The Audit Chamber does not break down the construction requirements by specific generators, although it does offer a valuation based on the type of station.
An Energy Ministry official said the figures were not final and changes to the plan would be ready by the end of May. In June, the government will consider the new draft of the plan.
The ministry official declined to comment on the changes, saying only that the forecast for demand growth would be 2.2 percent to 3.1 percent per year.
The plan is entirely realistic, said Sergei Pikin, director of the Energy Development Foundation. If the pre-crisis demand growth of 3 percent to 4 percent only returns in 2013, then by 2015, the country will need no more than 20 gigawatts of new capacity, he said. The most important thing is modernizing existing plants, which is 20 percent to 30 percent cheaper on average and would reduce costs for consumers, he said.
Moscow Times: For the Record http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/for-the-record/402433.html
24 March 2010
The government will control about 54 percent of Rostelecom after regional telecoms are merged into the telecommunications holding, Kommersant reported Tuesday, without saying where it got the information. (Bloomberg)
Russian oil producers will spend 1.5 trillion rubles ($50 billion) to upgrade and build refineries in the next five years, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service approved the transfer of some Rosavia assets to Aeroflot, but it has not received an application for the rest of the assets, the watchdog’s head, Igor Artemyev, said Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema won regulatory approval to buy 49 percent of oil producer Russneft, said Igor Artemyev, head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service. (Bloomberg)
BarentsObserver: New apatite mine opens in 2012http://www.barentsobserver.com/new-apatite-mine-opens-in-2012.4762468-16175.html
2010-03-23
The Northwestern Phosphorous Company, a subsidiary of Akron, intends open its new mine in the Kola Peninsula in May 2012.
The Oleny Ruchey mine, which is located in the central parts of the peninsula will start production in May 2012, company Vice-President Sergey Fyodorov confirmed this week, MBnews.ru reports.
The mine will after four years of operations produce an annual 300,000 tons of apatite concentrate. After 11 years of operations, the annual production will reach peak production of 1,9 million tons of concentrate, the company website informs.
The first development part of the project has an estimated price tag of 265 million USD. Another 129 million USD is planned spent on a second development phase.
Tyrepress: Foundation Stone Laid at Yokohama’s Russian Planthttp://www.tyrepress.com/News/business_area/Manufacturing/19088.html
Created: March 24, 2010 08:36:00 AM
On March 23 the governor of Russia’s Lipetsk Oblast region, Oleg Korolyov, participated in a stone laying ceremony for Yokohama’s new tyre factory in the Lipetsk special economic zone. The ceremony, also attended by Yokohama Rubber managing director Mr. Suzuki along with Japanese and Russian government officials. In his welcoming speech, Mr. Suzuki stated that “Russia has become one of the three largest markets for us, on par with the US and China.” He added that Yokohama looks forward to working together to establish the Yokohama R.P.Z. L.L.C facility.
According to the Lipetsk Oblast regional government, the building of the Yokohama factory is part of an agreement between Japan and the Russian Federation to develop the production of vehicles and automotive components in Russia. The factory, to be built on a 43,000 square metre site, is expected to produce its first tyre in 2011 and reach its intended capacity of 1.4 million tyres per annum in 2014. The tyres will be shipped to OEM customers both in Russia and internationally, the Lipetsk Oblast government adds. Total investment in the project is said to be 11.7 billion roubles (£263.5 million).
Itar-Tass: GAZ Group plans to bring three new GAZelle models to market in April-August
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14948672&PageNum=0
23.03.2010, 23.57
NIZHNY NOVGOROD, March 23 (Itar-Tass) -- The Nizhny Novgorod-located Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) plans to bring three new models of its GAZelle vehicles in 2010, Managing Director of Avtozavod GAZ company Leonid Dolgov said on Tuesday.
In June, the company will produce a light commercial vehicle GAZelle-Classic, which is a modernised basic model, he said.
In April, a GAZelle-Business light commercial vehicle with gas-cylinder equipment will be launched in the production, Dolgov said, adding that a vehicle with diesel engine will the commissioned in July-August.
The new models will include the best technical solutions of the company, he said.
In 2009, the GAZ Group worked without losses. This year the company plans to increase its production by 25 percent, as compared to 2009.
The company plans to regain the pre-crisis level in 2011-2012.
GAZ Group is Russia’s largest manufacturer of light commercial vehicles, trucks, buses, cars, diesel engines, power-train components and road construction equipment.
GAZ Group was established in 2005 with the restructuring of RusPromAuto’s production assets. GAZ Group comprises 18 leading automotive and machine-building producers in Russia. GAZ Group sales in 2008 totalled about 4.7 billion U.S. dollars. GAZ Group has a great number of its subsidiaries across Russia.
Activity in the Oil and Gas sector (including regulatory)
RBC: Russia not to cut oil exports before 2025
http://www.rbcnews.com/free/20100324105651.shtml
RBC, 24.03.2010, Moscow 10:56:51.Russian oil exports are not expected to be decreased before 2025, ensuring that Russia will remain a major power on the primary market, the RBC Daily newspaper reported today citing a document on the strategy of Russia's oil industry development until 2020, which is currently being drafted by the Energy Ministry. Meanwhile, the government plans to begin reducing oil product exports next year thanks to an increase in domestic consumption. Notably, the plans of oil companies blatantly contradict those of the government.
According to the ministry's strategy, which is quite optimistic about the development of Russia's economy, the consumption of oil products on the domestic market is expected to increase 0.9 percent to 112.1m tonnes in 2010 and reach 216.6m tonnes by 2030. The strategy provides for a 3.1-percent rise in the next five years. Yet,
as some experts point out, this forecast seems a bit too optimistic, since it took over 10 years for domestic consumption to rise 0.9 percent prior to the crisis.
Furthermore, the strategy provides for a decrease in oil product exports to 121.5m tonnes in 2010 and to 80.4m tonnes by 2030. The dependency of Russia's economy on oil and gas will decrease significantly only by 2025. In the meantime, oil export is expected to increase to 250.4m tonnes in 2010 and to 260.1m tonnes in 2013. After that, it will remain virtually unchanged until 2020, when it will start to fall.
Steel Guru: Oil companies could pump RUB 1.5 trillion into refining by 2015 - Mr Sechinhttp://steelguru.com/news/index/MTM4MTE3/Oil_companies_could_pump_RUB_1_5_trillion_into_refining_by_2015_-_Mr_Sechin.html
Wednesday, 24 Mar 2010Interfax cited Mr Igor Sechin Russian Deputy Prime Minister as saying that oil companies could invest RUB 1.5 trillion in efforts to increase refining depth and the progression to higher euro standard fuel production by 2015.
Mr Sechin said product yield at Russian refineries is still extremely low at 72% on average.
One reason for this, Mr Sechin said is the extensive development of the Russian oil refining industry which has no shortage of oil. It is a shortage of crude that has driven the development of refining in other countries. He said that measures to improve efficiency could raise the Nelson index at refineries to 11-12, refining depth to 83% and product yield for light products to 77% to 78%.
In general, Mr Sechin said primary energy-saving initiatives could save the economy 51 million tonnes of standard fuel by 2015 and 94 million tonnes by 2020. He said that "The potential for energy saving and improved energy efficiency in the Russian economy is 421 million tonnes standard fuel per year and around half that potential is being realized in the fuel and energy sector,"
Mr Sechin said improving oil recovery ratios, the rational use of associated gas, lowering the technological level of gas consumption, raising the efficiency rate of generating equipment, cutting power grid losses, implementing new coal mining technology, recovering methane from coal seams and other measures are the main areas for raising energy efficiency in the fuel and energy industry. He said that the Russian economy is two or three times more energy intensive than developed economies.
Mr Sechin said new technical solutions could in time reduce the cost of transporting by up to 42% by improving the efficiency ratio of pumping equipment from 27%, which is way below the world best of 42%. He said that the use of the latest Russian technologies, specifically new generation 25-32 megawatt units, to improve the efficiency ratio of pumping equipment to 40%.
He added that this equipment would cut down on gas losses. Current gas expenditure is approximately 59 billion cubic meters, but more efficient units would help save around 20 billion cubic meters per year.
Mr Sechin said the use of highly durable pipes in pipeline construction should also be encouraged. He said that "This could reduce metal consumption in gas pipelines 13% to 15% by increasing pressure, and reduce the cost of pipeline construction."
(Sourced from Interfax)
Steel Guru: Russia boosts natural gas exports by 63pct 2 monthshttp://steelguru.com/news/index/MTM4MTE1/Russia_boosts_natural_gas_exports_by_63pct_2_months.html
Wednesday, 24 Mar 2010Interfax quoted the Economic Development Ministry said in its economic monitoring report for the first two months of the year Russia exported 28.4 billion cubic meters of gas in January to February 2010, 63% more than in the same period last year.
Russia exported 16.7 billion cubic meters outside the CIS including 11.3 billion cubic meters in February. Russia exported 11.7 billion cubic meters to CIS countries in the two months including 5.5 billion cubic meters in February. Gas exports in February rose 100% overall to 16.8 billion cubic meters.
According to Federal Customs Service data Russia Sakhalin-2 project also exported 584,000 tonnes of LNG, the equivalent of 1.31 billion cubic meters in January.
Russia produced 122 billion cubic meters of natural gas and associated petroleum gas in the first two months of the year, 16.5% more than in the same period last year. Gazprom produced 96.7 billion cubic meters in the period, 14.1% more YoY. That accounted for 79.2% of the total, down from 80.9% in the same period last year. Oil companies and independents produced 25.4 billion cubic meters in the two months, 26.5% more.
Production was higher due to stronger demand in the housing utilities and electricity sectors as well as in the metals and chemical sectors. Gas production in February rose 15.9% to 57.8 billion cubic meters. Average daily production equaled 2.06 billion cubic meters, 3.3% more than in February 2009. Gazprom produced 45.8 billion cubic meters in February, 15% more. The gas giant accounted for 79.2% of total Russian production in the month, down from 79.8% in February 2009. Oil companies and independent producers produced 12 billion cubic meters of gas in February, to boost their share of total production to 20.8%.
According to provisional data from the Energy Ministry Gas consumption in Russia totaled 106.9 billion cubic meters in the two months, 10.8% more than in the same period last year. Boiler plants and thermal electricity stations consumed 28.5 billion cubic
meters in the period, 9.4% more. (Sourced from Interfax)
23.03.2010
Oil and Gas Eurasia: FAS Begins Applying New Oil Products Formulahttp://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/news/p/0/news/6804
The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has begun applying the price formula for oil products that was agreed with oil companies without waiting for the government to approve it, FAS Chief Igor Artemov said today.
He pointed out that the formula has already been sent to the government for approval and FAS ahead of a meeting between deputy prime ministers Igor Shuvalov and Igor Sechin. “But we have made it known that we are already using the formula in day to day practice”, Artemov said, adding that if the government decides to correct some points of the document, then FAS would begin suing the corrected version, Gazeta.ru reports.
Copyright 2010, Oil and Gas Information Agency. All rights reserved.
Reuters: Ukraine govt draws blank in first Russia gas talkshttp://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE62M2IF20100323
Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:33pm GMT
* Ukraine seeking revision to gas deal
* First approach by new Ukrainian government
* Ukraine says prime ministers could meet this week
* Gazprom says Ukraine took less gas than contracted in Q1
By Vladimir Soldatkin
MOSCOW, March 23 (Reuters) - A first attempt by Ukraine's new government to secure lower Russian gas prices ended without visible success on Tuesday, although Kiev might refresh talks at a meeting of the countries' prime ministers later this week.
Russian state-run gas export monopoly Gazprom (GAZP.MM) said in a statement late on Tuesday that its chief executive, Alexei Miller, met Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Yuri Boiko in Moscow to discuss Russian gas supplies to Ukraine.
Gazprom said that Ukraine took less Russian gas in the first quarter of 2010 than stipulated by its contractual obligations and that, by next winter, Ukrainian state energy
firm Naftogaz should have enough gas in storage to meet domestic demand and transit needs for Europe.
The visit by the Ukrainian delegation was the first attempt by the new leadership of President Viktor Yanukovich to secure a revision of what Ukraine says are onerous prices for Russian natural gas. [ID:nLDE62M0E6]
Ukraine's economy relies hugely on gas imports from Russia, but the country has struggled to pay its bills under a 10-year agreement worked out in January 2009 that brought an end to a dispute that severed midwinter gas supplies to parts of Europe.
Yanukovich was quoted on the presidential website on Monday as saying he wanted a series of bilateral agreements to be prepared for signing in time for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Kiev in mid-May.
"This was just a try; the beginning of a dialogue," a source in Russia's Energy Ministry told Reuters about Tuesday's meeting between Gazprom and the Ukrainian delegation headed by Boiko.
Yanukovich's press service said earlier on Tuesday that the Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers, Vladimir Putin and Mykola Azarov, would meet in Moscow on Thursday, without elaborating.
On Tuesday, Medvedev and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who oversees the energy sector, were attending a meeting in western Siberia. (Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, editing by Robin Paxton and Jim Marshall)
Moscow Times: Firtash Allies at Naftogaz http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/firtash-allies-at-naftogaz/402431.html
24 March 2010
Naftogaz Ukrainy appointed people close to billionaire Dmitry Firtash to run two of its units, Kommersant reported Tuesday, citing the state-run energy company’s press office.
Yuriy Borisov will head DK Ukrgazvydobuvannya, a gas extraction unit, while Serhiy Vinokurov will head DK Ukrtransgaz, a fuel transit unit, the newspaper reported. They both worked for Firtash’s OstChem Holding, which controls chemical companies, the newspaper reported.
(Bloomberg)
Financial Times: TNK-BP poisedto sell Kovykta gas fieldhttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/280d2642-36e6-11df-bc0f-00144feabdc0.html
By Catherine Belton in Moscow
Published: March 24 2010 02:00 | Last updated: March 24 2010 02:00
TNK-BP, BP's Russian oil venture, said yesterday it aimed to sell its vast Kovykta gas field to Rosneftegaz, the state holding company, by the end of the year, in a deal that could end a long-running dispute that has dented investor confidence.
Viktor Vekselberg, one of TNK-BP's Russian billionaire shareholders, told reporters that talks with Rosneftegaz were "constructive" and that TNK-BP planned to sell the vast east Siberian gas field to Rosneftegaz for $700m-$900m.
His comments were the first official confirmation that TNK-BP was in talks with Rosneftegaz, and a further sign the government is seeking a way to end the deadlock over the field.
Development of the field has been in limbo for years amid threats that TNK-BP's licence would be revoked for failing to start full-scale production.
Investor fears that Russia could expropriate the field were revived in February when Rosprirodnadzor, the environmental watchdog, said it was issuing new recommendations that TNK-BP be stripped of its licence to develop the field.
The increase in pressure came just ahead of the start of talks with Rosneftegaz, the state holding company chaired by Russia's powerful energy tsar, Igor Sechin.
But Mr Sechin sought to assure investors that any decision to strip TNK-BP of its Kovykta licence would not be an "expropriation" and would take into account costs incurred in developing the field.
TNK-BP had agreed to sell the field to Gazprom in 2007 for $700m-$900m, but the deal stalled over price. Since then, Gazprom has repeatedly insisted it is not interested in the field, which has gas reserves of 1,300bn cubic metres and is strategically located to supply China.
TNK-BP says it has been unable to launch full production because it has been unable to reach supply agreements with Gazprom.
Talks with Rosneftegaz are, however, another sign Mr Sechin, who serves as deputy prime minister for energy while chairing Rosneft, the state-controlled oil group, is eyeing more influence on the gas industry.
This comes as Gazprom, the rival state gas export monopoly, struggles to deal with a series of blows.
Gazprom's position in European export markets is being squeezed by the arrival of liquefied natural gas and a slump in demand, while it has been unable to clinch an important supply deal with China.
One person familiar with the situation said Rosneftegaz, which holds the state's 75.16 per cent stake in Rosneft and a 10.74 per cent stake in Gazprom, could be used to park the Kovykta assets before a decision is made on whether to allocate the field to Gazprom or Rosneft.
It does not yet appear as if a decision has been made on which of the state rivals will operate the field, the person said.
Telegraph: TNK-BP to sell key gas field to Russia after 10-year battlehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7506900/TNK-BP-to-sell-key-gas-field-to-Russia-after-10-year-battle.html
One of the oligarchs behind BP's Russian joint venture TNK-BP has confirmed that the company will sell one of the world's largest gas fields for at least $700m (£465m) by the end of the year. By Rowena Mason, City Reporter (Energy)Published: 9:24PM GMT 23 Mar 2010
The Russian state has had its eye on the enormous Kovytka gas prospect in Siberia for many years, applying pressure on the oil company to hand it over.
Viktor Vekselberg, one of the four Russian billionaires who own half of TNK-BP, said that Kovykta would be sold to Rosneftegaz, a state holding company. It had previously been in negotiations about selling the field to state giant Gazprom, but could not agree a price.
"We plan this year to close the deal," said Mr Vekselberg, according to Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.
The decision to sell Kovytka comes a month after Russia's environmental watchdog, recommended that TNK-BP's site licence should be stripped because it has failed to develop the prospect quickly enough.
TNK-BP wanted to spend $20bn on the field, but production has never got off the ground. The joint venture has argued it cannot ramp up output because Gazprom has a monopoly on exports to nearby China and it would need to build pipelines costing billions of dollars to reach the Asian markets.
BP has always played down the importance of Kovytka, saying it has long been excluded from calculations of the company's growth.
The Kremlin has a history of seizing key assets from private companies, which in past years has led to an exodus of multinational oil companies from the country. However, the latest play for Kovytka comes as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been trying to attract more foreign investment into the technically difficult fields of northern Russia.
March 24, 2010 10:33
Interfax: Lukoil awaits two events on March 24 that could affect share priceshttp://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=153613
MOSCOW. March 24 (Interfax) - Lukoil (RTS: LKOH) will publish US GAAP financials for 2009 on March 24 and ConocoPhillips might on the same day announce it plans to sell 10% of Lukoil shares.
Lukoil will post a net profit of $2.1 billion for the fourth quarter of 2009 under US GAAP, according to the consensus forecast of 17 banks and investment companies compiled by Interfax. Lukoil posted a net loss of $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. Net profit for the full year will total $7.4 billion, according to the forecast, 19% less than in 2008.
The analysts expect revenue to rise 31.3% in the fourth quarter year-on-year, but believe full-year revenue will decline 25.4% to $80.3 billion. EBITDA for the full year is forecast to decline 9.4% to $14.1 billion.
Company chief Vagit Alekperov said previously that Lukoil would post a net profit of about $7 billion in 2009 under US GAAP compared with $9.144 billion in 2008.
Lukoil is presenting its earnings report in London and will conduct a conference call with Vice President Leonid Fedun, Lukoil-West Siberia general director Azat Shamsuarov and Lukoil Overseas President Andrei Kuzyaev, and others.
Virtually at the same time as the Lukoil presentation is underway, ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva may announce in New York that his company plans to sell 10% of Lukoil shares.
On Tuesday Lukoil chief Vagit Alekperov said the company is not planning to buy back its shares from ConocoPhillips in the event they are put up for sale.
The news sent Lukoil shares down 2%. As of 6:07 p.m. Lukoil shares were quoted at 1,650.5 rubles on MICEX, 2.3% below the close on Monday. On RTS Classica Lukoil declined 1.4% to $55.8 per share.
"ConocoPhillips has notified Lukoil that it wants to sell up to 10% of shares in the company. We have the right of first refusal, but I don't see the need for that at the moment," he said.
ConocoPhillips might sell the shares on the market in very small lots, he said.
"ConocoPhillips needs money to support itself and this [the Lukoil shares] is their most viable asset," he said.
Alekperov doubts the sale would depress Lukoil stock prices. "No one wants to see that: They don't [ConocoPhillips], and our shareholders don't either. Therefore the sale will be carried out very carefully," Alekperov said.
Commenting on whether he plans to increase his own stake in Lukoil, Alekperov said: "I always buy."
In October 2009 ConocoPhillips said that it would sell a portion of assets over the next two years totaling $10 billion. Analysts noted that the list of assets might include its 20% stake in Lukoil. Alekperov has said the American company does not plan to sell the stake. "I met with the president of ConocoPhillips, and we discussed these issues. ConocoPhillips has a program to cut costs and to sell assets that they do not consider strategic. Our stake has not been considered for sale by either the board of directors or management," he said.
When asked on March 17 whether Lukoil had decided which ConocoPhillips assets it might buy, Alekperov said: "So far, no." He added that there were no plans for a share buyback.
Meanwhile, Lukoil board chairman Valery Graifer told journalists that the Lukoil shares ought to be purchased back from ConocoPhillips.
Lukoil managers own a combined 32.66% of Lukoil shares, according to a memorandum prepared for a placement of Eurobonds in October 2009.
According to that document, Alekperov owned 20.599% of Lukoil shares (up from 20.54% the previous year) Vice President Leonid Fedun had 9.247% (9.21%), board member Nikolai Tsvetkov had 1.032%, First Executive Vice President Ravil Maganov had 0.486%, board member Sergei Mikhailov had 0.05% and board chairman Valery Graifer had 0.007%.
RTS$#&: LKOH
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Financial Times: Conoco to halve stake in Lukoilhttp://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9c54c536-3697-11df-b810-00144feabdc0.html
By Catherine Belton in Moscow and Sheila McNulty in Houston
Published: March 23 2010 16:25 | Last updated: March 23 2010 19:52
ConocoPhillips has told Lukoil it intends to halve its 20 per cent stake in the company, Russia’s second-biggest oil producer said.
The cut, which at current prices could raise up to $4.9bn for the third biggest US oil group, would deal a blow to the biggest and most successful partnership between a Russian and US energy major to date.
Vagit Alekperov, Lukoil chief executive, said on Tuesday Conoco had told the company of its plans to sell the 10 per cent stake in small portions but added that Lukoil saw no reason to use its pre-emptive rights to buy the stake.
Conoco is already seeking to raise $10bn in cash to pay off debts. But its apparent decision could reflect the shift in dominance of Russia’s energy sector towards state-backed companies such as Rosneft and Gazpromneft, the oil arm of Gazprom, the state-controlled gas group.
This has left Lukoil by the wayside since Conoco first bought into it in 2004, analysts said.
Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib investment bank in Moscow says: “When they bought into Lukoil it was a time when it was positioned as Russia’s premier oil company.
“At the time they expected they would be able to use that relationship to expand further into Russia.
“But today the rules of the oil game have changed in Russia; today you are not in it unless you are partnered with a state company”.
“The catalyst for the sale comes from their debt position but the reason they are selling is because the competitive position they had with this company when they acquired it no longer exists.”
Rosneft emerged as Russia’s foremost oil producer from the state break-up of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos, the target of earlier failed efforts by Exxon Mobil and Chevron of the US to gain entry into Russia’s oil sector via tie-ups with a local company.
Rosneft, Gazpromneft and Kremlin-friendly Surgutneftegaz are now seen as frontrunners for new licences to develop big new fields, while companies with foreign participation are treated with suspicion by the government, analysts said.
Mr Weafer said: “It is no longer justified to have so much funds tied up with Lukoil. A 10 per cent stake gives Conoco the same position as a 20 per cent stake so it makes sense to cut it back and reduce debt”.
Constraints on access to new fields are particularly important for Lukoil because production at its existing asset base in Russia is expected to decline, according to Valery Nesterov, oil and gas analyst at Troika Dialog investment bank in Moscow.
Even though Lukoil has the largest hydrocarbon reserves in Russia its deposits are expensive to develop and scattered across Russia and abroad, Mr Nesterov said.
As the company focuses on efficient production over expansion at all costs, its production is forecast to decline annually by 1 per cent a year in the next few years, he added.
Lukoil and Conoco had nevertheless built up a successful alliance since the US firm hooked up with Lukoil in 2004, gradually increasing its stake to 20 per cent and investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a joint venture with Lukoil in the Arctic called Naryanmarneftegaz, which in 2009 reached full capacity production at 7.5m tonnes a year.
Analysts had expected Conoco would focus on the sale of other assets to raise cash to boost its balance sheets, such as exploration and production assets in Canada and the continental US, some natural gas assets in the North Sea and US pipelines and terminals.
Conoco’s 9 per cent stake in the Syncrude oil sands projects in Canada – among the world’s biggest oil sands mining and synthetic crude processing sites – was among those assets noted up for sale.
But Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, the consultancy, said ultimately Conoco’s Lukoil stake represented a “big, liquid asset that is very valuable.”
Jim Mulva, Conoco’s chief executive, “is committed to raising a lot of money. This is frankly, the easiest and least disruptive way to do that,” he said.
If the stake is sold gradually over three years as expected, the sale might not dent Lukoil’s share price too much, analysts said. Lukoil also had a broad base of US institutional investors such as Blackrock, Fidelity and Baring Asset Management.
Conoco declined to confirm the sale.
Reuters: Russia's Sistema cleared to buy Russneft stakehttp://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62M2MV20100323
Tue, Mar 23 2010
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian oil-to-telecoms group Sistema <SSAq.L> on Tuesday received permission from Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) to acquire up to 49 percent of mid-sized oil company Russneft, a FAS spokeswoman said.
Sistema said in December it was interested in further expanding its oil empire by buying into Russneft but did not want to buy more than 49 percent, given Russneft's debts, estimated at $3 billion.
In January, Russneft's ownership reverted back to its founder Mikhail Gutseriyev after Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska reversed a deal concluded in 2007 to acquire the firm.
(Reporting by Vlasta Demyanenko; Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin, editing by Will Waterman)
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 15:16
Irish Times: Petroneft 'ahead of schedule'http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0323/breaking54.html
EX-listed exploration company Petroneft Resources said today it was ahead of schedule at its licences in Tomsk Oblast, Russia.
In a drilling update, the company said the first of nine production wells to be drilled this year, at the Lineynoye oil field in its Licence 61 at Tomsk Oblast, was spudded 3 weeks ahead of schedule.
"Spudding of our first production well was an important milestone and boosts our confidence that we will commence year-round production in Q3 and achieve the initial target production of approximately 4,000 bopd by the end 2010,” said chief executive Dennis Francis.
It also said the construction of a 60km pipeline from Lineynoye to Kiev-Eganskoye on schedule, with construction due to be completed in mid-April.
Rigzone: PetroNeft Spuds Ahead of Schedule at Lineynoye Field PetroNeft Resources plc. 3/23/2010URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=89947PetroNeft Resources provided an update on its operations.Highlights:
First of nine production wells spudded 3 weeks ahead of schedule Pipeline construction on schedule and within budget Equipment procurement and mobilization nearing completion First year-round production scheduled for Q3
Production drilling
PetroNeft announces that the first of its nine planned production wells to be drilled in 2010 has been spudded at the Lineynoye oil field in License 61, approximately 3 weeks ahead of schedule.The 2010 production drilling program will involve the drilling of 9 wells from the current location utilizing a rail-mounted production drilling rig designed to facilitate the drilling of multiple deviated wells with close spacing at the surface.Once the first well is drilled and cased, the drilling rig will move five meters along its rails and immediately commence drilling the second well of the program. This will be repeated for the third well, after which the rig will be skidded 15 meters to drill the fourth well while a workover rig completes the first three wells and installs electric submersible pumps ("ESPs"). Thereafter a fifteen meter skid will be inserted after the fifth and seventh wells to allow pairs of wells to be completed together, thereby optimizing both the timing of wells coming on production and the size of the drilling pad.All tubulars, supplies and consumables for the 9 well production drilling program are also on site.First production at the Lineynoye oil field remains scheduled for the third quarter of 2010.PipelineConstruction of the 60km pipeline from Lineynoye to Kiev-Eganskoye is progressing to plan. All of the pipe has been laid out along the route and construction of the pipeline is due for completion in mid April, well within the weather window required for this work. Final hydro-pressure testing of the line is scheduled for June 2010.Field facilitiesMost of the equipment required for construction of field facilities at Lineynoye has been procured and mobilized to location. This process should be complete by the end of March. Construction of these facilities has commenced and is due for completion in time to commence year-round production in the third quarter of 2010. The facilities include basic oil processing, oil storage, gas powered generation and communications systems as well as improved and enlarged crew accommodation and catering facilities.Dennis Francis, Chief Executive Officer of PetroNeft Resources plc commented, "Thanks to the efficient and carefully synchronized planning of our infrastructure and drilling programs and the commitment of our staff and contractors over the winter, all aspects of the Lineynoye Field development project are progressing on or ahead of schedule. Spudding of our first production well was an important milestone and boosts our confidence that we will commence year-round production in Q3 and achieve the initial target production of approximately 4,000 bopd by the end 2010."
OilPrice: Fate of foreign oil investors in limbo amid Ghana - Côte d’Ivoire border disputehttp://www.stockmarketsreview.com/extras/fate_of_foreign_%20oil_investors_in_limbo_amid_ghana_cote_d_Ivoire_border_dispute_20100324_3755/
Date: 24 March 2010 Contributed by OilPrice
By Fawzia Sheikh
A maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire that erupted this month casts doubt on future international oil claims near the contested area and raises questions about the reaction of foreign investors to the uncertainty.
Earlier this month, Côte d’Ivoire appealed to the United Nations to delineate its offshore border with Ghana, a bid seen as controversial since Russia’s Lukoil discovered oil reserves only days before off Ghana’s coast. Ghana’s Jubilee field will also begin operations later this year and give the country commercial oil-producer status.
Ghana found oil in 2006 and analysts estimate it has one billion to two billion barrels in proven oil reserves; Côte d’Ivoire is probably in the same range or has slightly less oil.
The Ghanaian parliament passed a boundary commission bill this week, according to media reports, which have also asserted that Côte d’Ivoire does not expect discussions to regress into a fight over oil rights. The commission would outline the country’s land borders and mark the limits of its maritime boundaries.
While an actual war may not be looming between the African neighbors over the rightful ownership of offshore resources, potential “unclear title right at the margin” will most certainly be a problem, argued Peter Pham, director of the Africa Project at the New York-based National Committee on American Foreign Policy and an associate professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
“I think both sides have a stake in settling this, because if there’s uncertainty, no one is going to invest anywhere near the disputed area for fear of having bought a license that’s worthless,” Pham cautioned.
A change of “one or two degrees” with respect to where a line is drawn out to sea can have a “huge impact 100 miles offshore,” and neither side will be in a position to profit from resources found there, Pham told OilPrice.com.
The Côte d’Ivoire challenge is being closely monitored by U.S. companies. The West African region, located in an Atlantic basin, is close to the United States and attracts U.S. companies, said Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, a New York-based analyst covering Africa at the Eurasia Group, a research and consulting firm.
The outcome of the maritime boundary row will also have a bearing on a number of small and mid-sized companies on both sides, Spio-Garbrah said. Firms like Kosmos Energy, Exxon, Total and Tullow Oil are all “sort of concerned” about the conflict, he said.
For the most part, though, oil investments have been made in blocks that are "unambiguously in one country’s economic zone or another,” Pham noted. But Ghana will move into a tricky “crunch” mode when most blocks have been spoken for and the
location of the rest are questionable, he said, adding “that’s going to delay the sales on both sides.”
At the moment, the Ghanaian government has reached this key stage as far as licensing is concerned, Pham said. Both countries are operating off the “same ambiguous maps that France and Great Britain left” following the Congress of Berlin in the 1800s, he said. The conference outlined the rules of Europe’s conquest of Africa.
Once the Ghana border commission stakes out a claim, Accra will have to compare it to its neighbour’s claim, which also “needs to be better articulated,” he argued. From there, he noted, the two can figure out the exact area in dispute and start to negotiate.
At this point, Pham added, it is “nearly impossible” to say which argument is legitimate.
But the dispute will “get very expensive,” he predicted, and how long it takes to resolve will depend on the "political will on both sides.”
Africa, more accustomed to fighting over the movement of people across borders, now has more at stake as oil blocks are at risk, he told OilPrice.com.
Indeed, there is a “scramble” for natural resources in this “latent belt of oil” stretching from Sierra Leona eastward to Nigeria, noted Eurasia Group’s Spio-Garbrah, adding this region may one day become a major producer.
The disagreement between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire foreshadows the sort of conflicts likely to take place in West Africa, as more oil wealth is unearthed in “marginal areas” and in countries that petroleum firms have not yet explored, said Spio-Garbrah.
These disputes, however, may simply become legal conflicts, he said, rather than slide into all-out war.
Source: http://www.oilprice.com/article-fate-of-foreign-oil-investors-in-limbo-amid-ghana-cote-divoire-border-dispute.html
This article was written by Fawzia Sheikh for Oilprice.com who focus on Fossil Fuels, Alternative Energy, Metals, <a href=" http://www.oilprice.com/articles-oil-prices.php" target="new">Oil Prices</a> and Geopolitics. To find out more visit their website at: http://www.oilprice.com
Russia Today: Technology key to boosting Russian crude production and energy efficiencyhttp://rt.com/Business/2010-03-24/technology-key-boosting-russian.html/print
24 March, 2010, 10:32
Russia's oil companies may be world leaders in terms of volume, but a visit by President Medvedev to a key oil producing region has highlighting further technological advances are needed.
President Medvedev chose Western Siberia to continue his push for economic innovation. Russia, as an oil super power, needs first of all it to upgrade its energy complex. Despite its huge resources Russia can’t use them efficiently with dated technology and old soviet equipment.
“Frankly speaking, most of the technological solutions, and devices, that are being used – are all foreign solutions, indeed this is particularly the case with equipment. Our task is to ensure that these technologies are produced locally.”
The President wants Russian companies to focus on deep oil processing technologies.
The Priapskoya oil field run by Rosneft is a good example of how modern technologies boost the bottom line, but it’s an exception to the rule. Here you can see everything from 3D modeling of a future oil fields, to the recycling of associated gas.
As part of the innovation strategy, Russia wants to create its own silicon valley. Viktor Vekselberg, head of the Renova Group, will be coordinating this ambitious project, and he says it will take at least five years before the first enterprises start working.
“Of course, traditionally we need to begin with creating an organized structure, prepare formal solutions. We need to confirm the number of staff required. People believe in this project and see it as the meaning of life for the next 5 years, and not as Sisyphean toil. This is a task that needs to be turned into concrete results.”
But before these grand plans will become a reality, the President says Russia still has to focus on developing energy saving technologies, with Russia losing vast amounts of production to energy inefficiency.
GazpromUkrainian News: Gazprom Complains Of Naftohaz Ukrainy's Taking Less Gas Than Expected In First Quarter http://un.ua/eng/article/255697.html
(09:43, Wednesday, March 24, 2010)
Russia's Gazprom gas monopoly has said the Naftohaz Ukrainy national oil and gas company takes less natural gas in the first quarter of 2010 than envisaged by the gas contract.
Ukrainian News learned this from a statement by Gazprom about a meeting between Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller and Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Yurii Boiko.
The statement reads that Naftohaz Ukrainy's taking less natural gas raises a question of provision of required volumes of natural gas for pumping into the Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities by the start of the 2010-2011 heating season.
"We should proceed from the task of the Naftohaz Ukrainy national oil and gas company to have required volumes of natural gas in underground storage facilities by the start of the autumn-winter period, so as to come through the autumn-winter peak without problems," said Miller.
He said Naftohaz Ukrainy should accomplish this task in order to secure gas supplies to Ukrainian consumers and reliable transit of Russian natural gas to Europe.
Fuel and Energy Minister Boiko said the new leadership of the Ukrainian fuel and energy complex strives for updating the relations with Gazprom and building a fair and mutually beneficial cooperation in the gas sector.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Ukraine planned to import nearly 7 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the January-March 2010 period.
Ukraine imported 2.55 billion cubic meters of natural gas in January 2010 and nearly 2 billion cubic meters in February 2010.
Ukraine is expected to import 2.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas in March 2010.
The price of import natural gas for Ukraine at the Russian-Ukrainian border is USD 305 per 1,000 cubic meters in the January-March 2010 period.
According to the balance of natural gas supplies and distribution for 2010, Ukraine plans to import 27 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2010.
Energy Intelligence: Gazprom Spuds 3rd India Well http://www.energyintel.com/DocumentDetail.asp?Try=Yes&document_id=663514&publication_id=31
Copyright © 2010 Energy Intelligence Group, Inc. (click for details)Wednesday, March 24, 2010
SummaryRussia's Zarubezhneftegas, Gazprom's overseas subsidiary, said Tuesday it has spudded a third exploration well in Block 26 in the Bay of Bengal off India...
23.03.2010
Oil and Gas Eurasia: Uralmash Wins Gazprom neft Rig Tenderhttp://www.oilandgaseurasia.com/news/p/0/news/6796
Uralmash won a Gazprom neft tender to supply five stationary 320 ton rigs, the company reported in a news release. Two rigs will be delivered in November 2010 and three will be delivered in January 2011. According to the Uralmash press service, Gazprom neft will receive Uralmash 5000/320 EK-BMCh units. This type of rig is meant for cluster drilling test wells on oil and gas fields in the Far North.
The rigs are packaged plant modules equipped with modern derricks with open forward-facing rotational systems. The rigs include environmentally friendly circulation systems to reduce pollution.
Copyright 2010, Uralmash. All rights reserved.