Johnson's Russia List #6023 15 January 2002 davidjohnson@erols.com A CDI Project www.cdi.org [Note from David Johnson: 1. Reuters: Russia says talks with Chechens suspended. 2. Reuters: Russia sneers at U.S. in media freedom spat. 3. Luba Schwartzman: ORT Review. 4. Moscow Times: Boris Kagarlitsky, Ded Moroz's Darker Side. 5. strana.ru: Michael Stedman, Halting Population Decline Will Take Lots of Russian Babies. Grim concoction saps a nation's strength. 6. RFE/RL: Francesca Mereu, Pasko's Treason And Espionage Conviction Draws Protest. 7. Interfax: Russians Rally in Moscow Against Closure of TV Station. 8. Wall Street Journal Europe editorial: Law and Pravda. 9. Reuters: Russia slams U.S. diplomats it says joined protest. 10. Moscow Times: Natalia Yefimova, New Faces But Old Loyalties in Senate. 11. TimeEurope.com: Maryann Bird, Slick Operators. As their U.S. allies pursue a broader, more diverse energy market, the Russians are poised to deliver. 12. AFX: Russia ratings improved under Putin; needs to overcome opposition - Moody's. 13. Interfax: U.S. Missile Defense No Threat to Russia for a Decade, Says Russian Negotiator. 14. BBC: Caspian sturgeon stocks plummet.] ****** #1 Russia says talks with Chechens suspended By Peter Graff MOSCOW, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Russia, which has admitted to only two hours of peace talks with Chechen rebels in nearly two and a half years of war, said on Monday all contacts had been halted because the rebels had refused to surrender their arms. The deputy to the Russian official who met a rebel representative at a Moscow airport in November, for the only peace talks since Moscow sent troops into the breakaway region in 1999, told Itar-Tass news agency no contacts were under way. "(Rebel leader Aslan) Maskhadov does not accept the conditions laid out by the president of Russia," Nikolai Britvin said. Britvin is a deputy to Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's representative for southern Russia, who met Maskhadov's envoy Akhmed Zakayev in November. That meeting was the only publicly disclosed exception to Moscow's policy during its ongoing second Chechen war of holding no peace talks. Russian troops, who swept into Chechnya in 1999, now control most of the territory and have installed pro-Moscow authorities. But without any parallel political process Moscow has notably failed to pacify the region or coax thousands of refugees home. The rebels routinely kill Russian troops in mine attacks and ambushes, and assassinate pro-Moscow Chechen officials. Tass said the bodies of a department chief of the pro-Moscow Chechen police and his nephew were found murdered on Monday. One Russian special unit police officer was blown up with a mine at a checkpoint, Interfax news agency said. Tass said a Russian helicopter had wiped out a group of six rebels in a rocket attack. Russian reports of rebel dead, like rebel reports of Russian dead, are not generally accurate. TALKS NEVER GOT OFF THE GROUND Putin had set the stage for the talks with rebels after the September 11 attacks on the United States, saying Russia was willing to discuss guerrillas' disarmament and reintegration into Chechen political life. But there was no second meeting. Russia has long said that the rebels it is fighting in Chechnya are linked to Osama bin Laden and other international militants, and Moscow says its Chechen campaign is part of the U.S.-led "war on terrorism." Putin's tentative initiative may have been intended to make Western leaders feel more comfortable siding with Moscow, persuading them he has not ruled out a political solution. Western countries see Maskhadov, Chechnya's elected president, as a relative moderate and a legitimate partner for talks. But with the beginning of 2002 Russia launched a new crackdown, closing roads and sealing off villages and towns so that its troops can perform mass arrests of militant suspects. Talks have again been ruled out. "Those people, including the OSCE, who are talking today about the necessity for political dialogue with the insurgent leaders are either short-sighted or have ulterior motives," Britvin said. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe was the main mediator in lengthy peace talks during a first, 1994-96 war in Chechnya which ended with a Russian troop withdrawal that officials in Moscow now routinely describe as "treason." ****** #2 Russia sneers at U.S. in media freedom spat By Peter Graff MOSCOW, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Moscow lashed out at Washington on Monday for criticising a court ruling to shut an independent television station, the latest sign that a post-September 11 honeymoon in Russian-U.S. ties is fraying. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had said on Friday the United States was "disappointed" by the "strong appearance of political pressure on the courts" which ordered shut the only nationwide station still outside the Kremlin's grip, TV6. In an angry statement described as a reply to the U.S. remarks, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the station's case was a purely business affair. "The situation around TV6 is above all an economic dispute among its shareholders," it said. Washington had pressed Moscow to keep its courts independent, it said, but "regretfully, the media and political structures in countries that consider themselves the standard of democracy often make contradictory demands on Russia." The statement was written in the sarcastic tone that often characterised Russian diplomatic language during disputes before ties warmed in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Other recent statements have also sounded shrill. Earlier on Monday, the ministry said U.S. diplomats had breached "generally recognised international norms" by appearing at a rally in support of a journalist convicted of treason for telling Japanese media that the Russian navy dumped toxic waste. And on Friday Moscow accused Washington of maintaining "a Cold War-era system of open discrimination" for keeping Russia on a list of states with a poor track record of stopping the spread of weapons technology. DISPUTE REVIVES QUESTIONS ABOUT PUTIN Despite the Kremlin's insistence the case is purely about business, the TV6 dispute has revived questions about President Vladimir Putin's tolerance of dissent. Most of TV6's journalists came from NTV, a private station that Kremlin-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom seized in a boardroom coup last year. Media Minister Mikhail Lesin said on Monday Moscow would revoke TV6's broadcast licence as soon as a commission was set up to oversee its court-ordered liquidation. A "conditional tender" would be held immediately for temporary control of the station's broadcast frequencies, followed by a full-blown tender for permanent control in April, Lesin said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio. He said the government hoped to keep TV6 on the air in some form, with minimal interruption for viewers. But he said it was too early to predict whether it would be possible for the members of the station's current staff to stay on. "Nobody is preventing the journalistic collective from setting up their own company, competing in the tenders and bidding for the frequency," he said. The station's journalists say they doubt they will be given a fair shot. The station is majority-owned by Boris Berezovsky, a businessman and one-time Kremlin insider who has become a fierce critic of Putin and lives in self-imposed exile. The court ordered it shut at the request of a pension fund controlled by Russia's largest oil company LUKoil, which owns 15 percent, which said the station was poorly managed. For now, TV6 continues to broadcast. Its NTV-veteran journalists, who staged on-air strikes and large public protests when that station was taken over last year, have been more subdued this time around, staying at their jobs. But they have hammered home the point that somebody powerful seems to want them gone. In a tongue-in-cheek advertisement for flagship political programme Itogi (Summing up), they show host and station general director Yevgeny Kiselyov as James Bond, narrowly escaping endless assassination attempts by a sinister villain. ****** #3 ORT Review www.ortv.ru Compiled by Luba Schwartzman (luba7@bu.edu) Research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy at Boston University HEADLINES, Monday, January 14, 2002 - The first limitations on smoking tobacco have come into effect in Russia. They were outlined in a federal law last summer: It will now be illegal to sell tobacco to minors and to smoke in places of employment; smoking in public areas will be heavily regulated; smoking by television, film, and stage actors will be prohibited unless it is an intrinsic part of the artistic design; and public figures and political leaders will not be allowed to smoke when portrayed in the media. - Tadeusz Iwinski, the chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography has arrived in Chechnya. After familiarizing himself with the position of the forced migrants, Iwinski noted that there has been a major improvements in conditions. - A driver of one of the 300 vehicles stuck in a tunnel on the Transcaucasian highway died from smoke inhalation today. - Media Minister Mikhail Lesin announced that the president is aware of the events surrounding TV6, but does not wish to get involved. Lesin explained that the president finds that the media market needs to regulate itself and that it is pointless to try to regulate it from without -- either by the government or by state-owned companies. - Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and the Cabinet to develop a plan for continuing the campaign against child homelessness. - One man died when the part of the Koksovaya mine (Kemerovo oblast) caved. In another mine, the Borkutinskaya, 9 divisions of mountain rescue workers are still trying to quell the fire that erupted on Sunday as a result of a methane explosion. Five miners died in the fire and 12 were hospitalized with serious injuries. - Central Electoral Commission Chairman Aleksandr Veshnyakov declared that, in the recent regional elections, there have been infractions serious enough to undermine the results. - Republic presidents have been chosen in Yakutia (Alrosa Diamond company president Vyacheslav Shtyrov 59%), Kabardino-Balkaria (incumbent Valery Kokov, 87%) and Adygea (Polis gold-mining company director Khazret Sovmen, 69%). - State Duma deputies return to work after the two-week holiday. The first official meeting of the spring session will take place on 16 January, but today, a number of committees, factions and deputy groups are gathering to work on projects. - In the flood-damaged regions of the Krasnodarsk krai conditions are improving. Local authorities are promising to help residents whose houses and property have been destroyed. - Brazilian President Fernando Enrique Cardozo is in Moscow on his first official visit. President Cardozo will meet with President Putin and with other members of the Russian government to discuss economic cooperation, cultural exchange, and military-technological collaboration. In particular, the Brazilian government is interested in the Russian Su-35 airplanes. ****** #4 Moscow Times January 15, 2002 Ded Moroz's Darker Side By Boris Kagarlitsky Ded Moroz is usually considered to be the Russian counterpart of Santa Claus -- a bearded, good-natured fellow who stuffs presents into children's stockings hung by the fireplace and is used to advertise various brands on television. In fact, Ded Moroz, according to the fairy-tales, is a severe and capricious man who depending on his mood will distribute gifts or make people freeze to death. This winter, the darker side of Ded Moroz's character was strongly in evidence. At the beginning of the New Year's holidays, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov ceremonially presented him with the keys to the city. Moscow was assailed with a terrible cold spell immediately after this. The mayor, however, didn't ask Ded Moroz to give the keys back and it would seem that he returned to his hometown of Veliky Ustyug with them. This winter in Moscow alone more than 300 people have died from the cold. In December and the first half of January, between 5 and 10 people froze to death each day -- more than the casualties sustained by the army in Chechnya. The fact that people are freezing to death on the streets of the country's most affluent city is not just a result of a high level of drunkenness and the poor state of city services, but is also indicative of a broader social malaise and the increasing numbers of homeless living on the streets of the capital. In Helsinki, where the climate is not dissimilar to ours and the people no less prone to hit the bottle, there is a municipal service that picks inebriated people up off the streets. On public holidays, volunteers are drafted in to provide reinforcement. Driving a car in Moscow in winter has turned into a hazardous adventure that can have unpredictable results. I get around town on the metro and usually make my meetings on time. The only time I took a taxi, however, it ended unfortunately, when the car I was in got stuck in a one-and-a-half hour traffic jam and I was late getting to the television studio where I was supposed to be participating in a live debate. Moscow is surprisingly poorly adapted to winter conditions and snow-fall can have disastrous consequences. If over the past month you haven't slipped on the ice that covers sidewalks at least once, it can mean one of only two things: either you are extremely lucky or you're a big boss and only ever have to take a couple of steps from the door of your car to the door of your office, home, etc. Complaints about the city authorities' lack of preparation for winter are nothing new. The real tragedy is that things are getting steadily worse. Ice-covered sidewalks as a universal phenomenon only came in with perestroika. Members of the older generations recount how under Stalin, dvorniks, or street cleaners, worked irreproachably, sidewalks were swept clean and even in winter, women could go out in high heels. Do we really need a regime of terror in order to keep the streets free of ice? I, for one, have no desire to return to Stalinist times. Cold weather has undoubtedly also played an important role in East European politics. In temperatures of minus 20 and below, people's desire to get out on the streets and protest drops off remarkably rapidly. In Poland in 1981, General Jaruzelski's regime introduced a martial law when the cold weather set in. Activists from the free trade unions responded with the slogan, "The winter is yours, but the spring will be ours!" In Russia, reforms normally take place in the warm season, while with the onset of the cold season the state has a tendency to demonstrate the full extent of its repressive might. It is no accident that Nikita Khrushchev's reforms were referred to as the "Thaw." It's also very convenient to conduct elections and referendums in winter, as the fewer people that make it to the polling booths, the easier it is to add "dead souls" to voting protocols. Officials sit in well-heated buildings and the roads they use to get around town tend to be among the few that are properly cleared of ice and snow. I can't think of a single incident of a city official freezing to death in his office or dying from a blow to the head from a falling icicle. That may go some way to explaining the city authorities' affection for Ded Moroz. Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. ****** #5 strana.ru January 14, 2002 Halting Population Decline Will Take Lots of Russian Babies Grim concoction saps a nation's strength By Michael Stedman Fewer births and higher mortality rates since 1992 have brought major demographic change to Russia and cut the population of the world's largest nation by 2.8 million people in just a decade. The figures are those of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) officials charting worrying change from their Moscow office. Alarming rates of HIV/AIDS infection and cases of TB doubling over the same time period suggest continuing wide-ranging consequences for what the experts monitoring movement call "sustainable human development." Record decline in Russia's population is a grim concoction of continuing population aging, falling fertility levels, rising mortality and dwindling net migration gain, says a UNDP National Human Development Report. It's no surprise, then, that the demographic time bomb is exercising the best of brains in Russia, charting how the challenge can be addressed, or even reversed. No less auspicious an organization than the Center of Demography and Ecology of Man at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences has now even published what was said to be a United Nations prediction that Russia's population could either grow to 152 million or drop to 100 million by the year 2050. Pulling out of the steep decline needs vast improvements in the nation's health and a baby boom in big numbers. But moving forward could also be helped, President Vladimir Putin evidently believes, by adopting the United States' successful immigration policy. A year ago in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, the head of state said that with immigration "we have an ideal opportunity for drawing labor resources from the expanses of the former USSR." It's unclear how far government has progressed with a program to repatriate millions of Russians among the diaspora of the Former Soviet Union. And there is no challenge to the contention that higher birth rates are the key to the issue. Experts have been quoted as saying three million births a year are needed, compared to less than 1.3 million a year in the last three years. Deaths must be held to less than two million a year, they say. The likelihood just now is that the pessimistic forecasters will be proved more accurate, for there is a nation full of lost souls to replace. Statistics from the Russian Academy of Sciences demography center show that Russia's human losses in the 20th century total some 100 million people. These were victims of the Second World War, the October Revolution, Civil War, purges, repressions and reprisals, famine in the Volga and the Ukraine, exacerbated by the flight of the aristocracy and the intelligentsia. Some anecdotal evidence is claimed to exist of an emerging Russian middle class self-confident enough to build families. But the decline in Russia's population reflects processes long-rooted in Russia's social and economic structure, say the UNDP's Moscow researchers. They point to two hypotheses invoked to explain fertility decline. "The first is that the fall in fertility levels in the early 1990s was the population's response to the socio-economic and political crisis and the country's disintegration," they reported. "The other hypothesis says that the sharp decline…was a continuation of the long-standing trend of demographic transition and that the crisis merely speeded up the process. If this hypothesis is correct, it leaves no hope for fertility rates reverting to their erstwhile levels…" Russia confronts problems in a class of their own, the UN experts have decided. "The record of developed countries abounds in reliable formulas for mortality reduction such as raising living standards, protecting and rehabilitating the environment, active and efficient health care, dissemination of time-tested behavioral patterns and so on," their analysis said, noting the massive costs Russia would incur in addressing the ills - chiefly alcohol related deaths - continuing to sap the strength of the nation's human capital. Putting the muscle back will indeed take a lot of babies. ****** #6 Russia: Pasko's Treason And Espionage Conviction Draws Protest By Francesca Mereu The prosecutor's office of Russia's Pacific Fleet is protesting last month's Vladivostok court decision to sentence journalist Grigorii Pasko to four years in prison, saying the sentence is too lenient and that he should be given a nine-year term instead. Pasko, who has spent years battling prosecutors over the case, was convicted of espionage and high treason for attempting to pass sensitive material to the Japanese media about the fleet's dumping of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. RFE/RL Moscow correspondent Francesca Mereu speaks to Pasko's wife and lawyer about the case. Moscow, 14 January 2002 (RFE/RL) -- Neither the defense nor the prosecution is satisfied with last month's court ruling sentencing military journalist Grigorii Pasko to four years in prison for attempting to pass sensitive information to Japan about Russia's Pacific Fleet in 1993. Lawyers for the 40-year-old Pasko say the conviction -- on charges of espionage and high treason -- is unjust and that they will seek an appeal. They say the decision is a kind of political reprisal for Pasko's work exposing hazardous environmental practices by the Russian navy, including the dumping of radioactive waste in the Sea of Japan. Prosecutors, meanwhile argue that the sentence is too lenient and that the journalist should receive at least a nine-year term. The Military Procuracy made a similar argument in 1999, when Pasko's first court appearance ended with acquittals on all but a minor charge. This time around, prosecutors used a secret Defense Ministry decree to secure the conviction. Pasko's case, which has seen him in and out of courtrooms and prison cells since he was first arrested by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents in 1997, has caught the attention of environmental and free-press advocates worldwide. It bears a striking similarity to the case of Alexander Nikitin, a retired navy captain who spent five years fighting treason charges after co-authoring a report on the dangers of Russia's nuclear fleet. Nikitin was finally granted a final acquittal in 2000. But the fate of Pasko -- a former naval officer and reporter with the Pacific Fleet newspaper "Boyevaya Vakhta" -- remains uncertain. Last week, protesters gathered outside the Vladivostok headquarters of the FSB to demand the journalist's release. Similar protests were held outside FSB headquarters in Moscow, and Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov criticized the ruling as unfair. "I consider it unnecessary for him to go and prove his innocence along the circles of hell of appeals to court," Mironov said. "The world public has long figured out who is right and who is to blame here." Pasko's wife, Galina, told RFE/RL her husband was surprised by the court ruling: "[Grigorii] had no illusions about our Soviet -- and in particular, military -- judicial system. I mean that it hasn't changed since Soviet times. [Grigorii] had no illusions, but he was hoping for a fair court decision, since a person who isn't guilty always hopes for a fair sentence. He didn't expect the sentence he got, or, [at least], he didn't imagine he would be blamed to such a degree." A member of Pasko's defense team, Alexander Tkachenko, spoke with RFE/RL from Vladivostok. He says Pasko was sentenced for allegedly attending a secret gathering of military commanders and handing the notes from the meeting to a Japanese newspaper. "He was accused of having attended a meeting of the Military Council [commanders] and of having taken notes [during the meeting] in order to write an article for ['Boyevaya Vakhta']. [Moreover], he is accused of intending to hand over these notes, illegally taken at the Military Council, to journalists of the [Japanese] paper 'Asahi Sinbun.' [Note that the prosecutors say] he only intended. This means that he is not accused of espionage, but only of intending to give 'Asahi Sinbun' an article about the military-tactical training of the Pacific Fleet. The accusation is not only ridiculous, but also unclear." Pasko, as a journalist, collected information about nuclear contamination in Russia's Pacific Fleet -- information that was used by Japanese newspapers like "Asahi Sinbun" to expose environmental abuses by the Russian navy. But Pasko has repeatedly asserted that he never passed militarily sensitive information to the Japanese. After his 1997 arrest, he was held in preventive detention for 20 months and eventually sentenced to three years in prison on the relatively minor charge of "abuse of office." He was immediately released under an amnesty law, but in November 2000, the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court canceled the decision and called for new hearings. Tkachenko calls the latest hearing and sentencing an FSB "conspiracy." "I believe that [Pasko's case is] a plot [organized by] the FSB. [The FSB] has always put pressure on the court, to force it to make such a decision. [The FSB] wanted, at any cost, for Pasko to be accused of something. It is a plot among the FSB, the military prosecutors, and the court." Pasko's trial is not Russia's only espionage case. Last week, 55-year-old Valentin Moiseev, a former diplomat convicted of spying for South Korea, lost his appeal to the Russian Supreme Court. Moiseev has been in jail since his arrest three years ago. Still another case is that of Igor Sutyagin, a 36-year-old military researcher at the Moscow-based U.S. and Canada Studies Institute. Sutyagin was arrested in 1999 and charged with high treason for passing state secrets to the U.S. He has been in jail ever since. Some analysts believe that these three cases signal a gradual swing back toward Cold War-style politics and note that since being elected president, Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, seems to have given a green light to espionage prosecutions. Russian parliamentary deputy and human rights advocate Sergei Kovalev told RFE/RL that all these espionage cases are part of a sad political trend. "Look how many trials are going on now and how many trials have just finished. All of them are espionage trials. Take the Pasko [case]. Have you ever in the world seen a spy who under his name openly published information from his spy investigations? The same is true for the Sutyagin or Moiseev cases. Look how our [supposedly] independent judicial system works. No judicial reform will change this sad situation. The reason is very simple -- this is a political order, and a political trend. And this is very sad." Pasko's lawyer, Tkachenko, says the journalist intends to appeal his case until a fair sentence is delivered. Pasko's wife Galina says that in the meantime, her husband is spending his time in jail studying and keeping himself busy. Her husband, she says, "has not lost the hope that someday in the future he may assert his rights." (RFE/RL's Russian Service contributed to this report.) ****** #7 Russians Rally in Moscow Against Closure of TV Station Interfax MOSCOW, Jan 14, 2002 -- A rally in support of TV6 organized by the youth branch of the Yabloko party was held in downtown Moscow, near the Griboyedov monument, today. Taking part in the rally were some 80 people, more than half of them members of the press, an Interfax correspondent has reported from the scene. The participants of the rally carried signs protesting about the liquidation of the TV company and calling on the state to become more "transparent". A number of Yabloko members and human right advocates spoke at the rally. In particular, State Duma deputy Sergey Mitrokhin said, "We are outraged by the disbanding of the outstanding creative personnel and are greatly alarmed by what is happening to the media in Russia." Another speaker, head of the Yabloko youth branch Ilya Yashin, noted that the new slogan of his organization is now "The state behind a glass!" He noted that "civil society can appear only when the Kremlin's walls become transparent". The rally lasted for about an hour, and no incidents were registered. On 11 January the presidium of the Russian Higher Arbitration Court left unchanged a ruling by the first instance court on the liquidation of the Moscow Independent Broadcasting Corporation (MNVK, the owner of the TV6 channel). The presidium reversed a ruling by the federal arbitration court of the Moscow judicial district (the appeal instance) of 29 December, which had invalidated the rulings of the lower courts on TV6's liquidation. ****** #8 Wall Street Journal Europe January 14, 2002 Editorial Law and Pravda How could a minority shareholder ostensibly representing pension interests shut down a profitable, popular television network on the basis of a law that is no longer even on the books? Welcome to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Russian media politics. Here, to mix our fictional metaphors, the Press Ministry has taken on many of the attributes of Orwell's Ministry of Truth, and the Kremlin is the 600-pound gorilla in the courtroom. TV6 was shut down by a Russian court on Friday. It was the last independent television network in the country, which ought to worry those who believe that Russia's value as a contributor to international stability, and reliable Western ally, bears some relation to its progress toward becoming a free, democratic state. Reflecting this concern last month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Kremlin leaders the U.S. wished to see TV6's fate decided without political interference. Mr. Powell granted an on-air interview to TV6 managing director Yevgeni Kiselyov to show his support for the network. But his intervention didn't help. TV6's demise is a sequel to the saga of NTV, which fell under the sway of the Kremlin last year. Security forces stormed the network's offices to seize control. A key feature of that takeover was the infamous Protocol 6 in which Press and Information Minister Mikhail Lesin promised jailed NTV owner Vladimir Gusinksy freedom from prosecution on government charges if he would just sign over his stake in the television network. Once freed, Mr. Gusinsky denounced the deal, saying he was coerced. But state-owned Gazprom, a creditor of Mr. Gusinsky's media company, took over NTV nonetheless. Mr. Gusinsky fled the country. Many of NTV's best-known journalists, including television star Kiselyov, moved to TV6. Another self-exiled oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, was two-thirds owner of TV6. But Lukoil-Garant, the pension-fund arm of oil giant Lukoil, owned a minority interest. Unlike the natural-gas giant Gazprom, Lukoil is not state-controlled (the government is a minority shareholder). But it has close Kremlin ties and relies on Kremlin beneficence for both its revenue flows and the settlement of its tax obligations. Lukoil-Garant accused TV6 of violating a Russian law that required a company's assets to balance out its debts over a period of time. Much of corporate Russia would be in the grave were the law widely applied. In fact, the law was so blatantly out of keeping with international standards and common business sense that the Russian parliament repealed it last year. The repeal took effect Jan. 1, which is why many thought TV6 was out of the woods. But the court ruled for Lukoil anyway. What are the implications of all this? One is a decline in the robustness of TV journalism. NTV may get to call itself "independent" again soon. NTV director Boris Jordan, a one-time investment banker and fund manager with close Kremlin ties, is putting together a consortium to negotiate a buy-out from Gazprom. Mr. Jordan told the Financial Times this weekend that he met Mr. Putin in July to persuade him to tell Gazprom to sell NTV. But whatever its new incarnation, you can bet that NTV's editorial policy will tip-toe around Kremlin sensitive spots such as Chechnya. If it fails any further appeals, TV6 too will likely get reincarnated. Lukoil-Garant on Saturday announced that it would be a bidder for the broadcasting license made available by TV6's dissolution and indicated it would offer a home in a new Lukoil-owned company to TV6's journalists. In an interview with Russian newspaper Commersant, Mr. Berezovsky claimed that press czar Lesin and presidential administration chief Alexander Voloshin had called TV6 directors to promise TV6 journalists continued employment and shares in the new network providing it had no involvement by Messrs. Berezovsky and Kiselyov. While no one could accuse Messrs. Berezovsky or Gusinsky of being slaves to journalistic ethics or truth-in-reporting, they nevertheless represented independent voices and competition in the marketplace of ideas. The state, through its back-room role in their downfall, has put a chill on that competition. It is a measure of the cynicism bred by decades of state control under communism that few in Russia find it odd that the Kremlin conducted such an exercise. In all this President Vladimir Putin has portrayed himself as a disinterested observer of obscure legal battles between private actors before an independent judiciary. Western leaders ought to know better and say so. Whatever credit we give Mr. Putin for responding (in his own interests) cooperatively in the war on terror, the Kremlin has not been a force for judicial independence or media freedom in Russia. Without those two key elements, democracy is a chimera. ****** #9 Russia slams U.S. diplomats it says joined protest MOSCOW, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. diplomats in the Pacific port of Vladivostok for taking part in protests to demand the release of journalist Grigory Pasko, Russian news agencies reported on Monday. But the U.S. embassy in Moscow said the two staff members had merely attended the demonstration as observers and had not acted inappropriately in any way. A military court convicted Pasko of high treason in December and sentenced him to four years' jail for telling Japanese media the Russian navy had dumped toxic waste in the Sea of Japan. Last week, dozens of people staged a protest rally outside the Vladivostok offices of the FSB domestic security service, which brought the case against Pasko. A former navy captain, Pasko was a journalist with the Pacific Fleet's newspaper at the time of his arrest in 1997. Interfax news agency said a Foreign Ministry note sent to the U.S. embassy in Moscow accused U.S. diplomats of taking part in the rally and making inappropriate public statements about the Russian judicial system. A Foreign Ministry official quoted by Interfax said the note had called the U.S. diplomats' behaviour "a breach of generally recognised international norms." Itar-Tass agency quoted the message as saying the incident could force the ministry to take "corresponding measures in the relationship with American diplomats." It gave no details. The Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment. U.S. embassy spokesman Thomas Leary told Ekho Moskvy radio station the two men from the U.S. consulate in Vladivostok went to the demonstration as observers, which he described as "normal diplomatic practice." He denied they had made any inappropriate comments about the Russian judicial system, adding that all statements made by U.S. diplomats during the protest "only put across the position of the U.S. administration on this issue." Concern about media freedom in Russia emerged after Vladimir Putin became Russian president two years ago. NTV, a private television station critical of Putin, softened its hostile reporting of the Kremlin after being taken over by the state-dominated gas giant Gazprom. Last week TV-6, the only national TV network outside Kremlin control, lost its battle to overturn a closure order, prompting its owner, self-exiled Boris Berezovsky, to accuse the Kremlin of trying to crush dissent. ****** #10 Moscow Times January 15, 2002 New Faces But Old Loyalties in Senate By Natalia Yefimova Staff Writer The revamped upper house of parliament is to kick into action this week with a varied bunch of newly tapped senators -- including hard-nosed businessmen, regional leaders and former Cabinet ministers. Analysts say the new delegates, 177 in all, will work hard to lobby the interests of the groups that backed their appointments, but most agreed that, when it comes to passing key legislation, the chamber is unlikely to defy the political will of the Kremlin. "The Federation Council is even more controllable than the State Duma," said Nikita Tyukov of the Center for Political Information. Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov agreed that, in most cases, the senators would be compliant. "On all politicized or politically ideological issues, they will all support the Kremlin as long as the Kremlin has a clear, firm position," he said. The overhaul of the chamber, which will hold its first session Wednesday, was an important part of President Vladimir Putin's efforts to centralize authority and rein in the country's powerful governors. In accordance with an August 2000 law penned by the president, regional governors and parliamentary speakers, who have made up the chamber since 1995, were to be replaced by the start of this year with their appointees. Unlike the previous Federation Council members -- who juggled their parliamentary duties with obligations in their home regions -- the new senator corps will work on a full-time basis. Since the revamp was announced, various influential groups have been scrambling to secure seats for their own people, and most appointments have been described as trade-offs involving the presidential administration, regional leaders and big business. "Seats are becoming the object of 'political haggling,'" Moscow State University law professor Suren Avakyan wrote in a recent assessment of the reform. As a result of this horse-trading, most of the 146 senators approved as of Monday fit into one or more of several overlapping groups: regional leaders, big business, Kremlin proteges or former Cabinet officials and "honorary retirees," such as the handful of governors who gave up their gubernatorial posts to clear the way for more powerful -- usually Moscow-backed -- candidates. Many observers have paid particular attention to the business contingent, which includes such corporate heavyweights as the deputy CEO of oil major Yukos, Leonid Nevzlin (Mordovia); Transaero CEO Alexander Pleshakov (Penza); Gazprom regional coordinator Leonid Lushkin (Bryansk); and Norilsk Nickel executive Leonid Bindar (Taimyr). Like Duma deputies, the senators must give up their commercial activity for the duration of their term. Some of these senators, such as Bindar, represent regions where their companies have major interests. But most have been delegated from small regions to which they have virtually no connections. In a radio interview last week, the Federation Council's speaker, Sergei Mironov, naively argued that the 30 or so businessmen now in the chamber would not use their new political clout to lobby their commercial interests "because the firms they represent are successful enough as it is." But Leonid Smirnyagin of the Moscow Carnegie Center said the relationship between powerful corporate executives and the regions they represent is a mutually beneficial one: The businessmen get an enviable platform for lobbying their interests, along with immunity from prosecution, while regional leaders -- who were demonstratively distanced from Moscow in 2000 -- get a representative with clout in the capital. Tyukov agreed that the weakened regions and their high-profile representatives had a symbiotic relationship, with influential senators in high demand. "No one from some small autonomous district, no matter how great he is, has even one-tenth the connections that a Muscovite has," he said. He added that many of the poorer regions may have likewise received direct or indirect financial aid from their new senators. Some of the legislation to be considered this year, like the reform of the natural monopolies, will have a powerful impact on businesses across the board, but Tyukov and Markov both said that an open clash between senators and Putin's government was unlikely. "Even if conflicts do arise, they will not come out publicly," but will be ironed out through negotiations behind the scenes, Tyukov said. Markov said that some of the economy-related legislation to be considered by parliament had "enormous potential" for igniting discord, but as long as the Kremlin's position was clear and unequivocal, the presidential administration would retain full control of the Federation Council's decision-making. This control will largely be guaranteed by senators like the Kremlin's public-relations guru, Mikhail Margelov (Pskov); deputy head of the government apparatus, Alexander Torshin (Marii-El); and, perhaps, Kremlin-connected oligarch Sergei Pugachyov (Tuva). These men, and others like them, also represent small or politically insignificant regions with which they have no evident ties. Other senators with connections to the Kremlin and the Cabinet include tested technocrats like Alexander Bushmin, a deputy finance minister under Alexei Kudrin, and former Energy Minister Alexander Gavrin. Despite the abundance of officials from Moscow, regional leaders also have a strong presence in the chamber. Mironov said that 11 senators are former governors or deputy governors returning to represent their regions in a new capacity. These include: former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev, yet to be confirmed, who shocked his republic last month by unexpectedly stepping down from his post; former Governor Leonid Roketsky, who lost his seat in the oil- and gas-rich Tyumen region to Kremlin loyalist Sergei Sobyanin in a fierce battle early last year; the nationalist ex-governor of Krasnodar, Nikolai Kondratenko, who shrewdly hand-picked his successor for the gubernatorial race in December 2000; and former Chukotka chief, Alexander Nazarov, who pulled out of the race to leave Kremlin-connected oil and aluminum tycoon Roman Abramovich with no serious competition. While curtailing the powers of the regions has been a characteristic element of Putin's centralizing reform, Carnegie's Smirnyagin was a bit more optimistic than others about the senators' ability to fulfill at least part of their functions. "The current law [on the Federation Council] is sufficient for its members to represent the interests of the regions," he said. But the bigger task, the Council's nationwide functions -- "that's a different thing altogether." At Wednesday's session, the chamber will confirm some newly appointed members, restructure part of its committees and vote on new regulations governing its work. Tyukov said one of the chamber's main tasks this political season would be to boost its role in shaping legislation considered by the Duma, and Federation Council officials have said as much. "The Federation Council will no longer espouse the practice whereby the State Duma passes draft laws without taking into consideration the ... opinions of the upper chamber," senator Nikolai Tulayev of Kaliningrad told reporters Friday. "The Federation Council must be very attentive in considering any law passed by the State Duma." A spokesman for the Council said by telephone Friday that the draft regulations include an explicit appeal to the chamber to design and submit legislation for consideration by the Duma, as well as amendments to bills going through the critical second reading. The coming year promises to bring volumes of important legislation. One example is the law on a constitutional assembly, the only body that can make major changes to the Constitution with relatively little bureaucratic hassle. One change that has been repeatedly suggested by Speaker Mironov is the extension of the presidential term from four to five or seven years. Thorny legislation on reforming natural monopolies and the housing maintenance sector will also be considered, along with bills on the painful issue of agricultural land sales. CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS OF THE FEDERATION COUNCIL To approve changes to intranational boundaries; To confirm presidential decrees on introducing marshal law; To confirm presidential decrees on introducing a state of emergency; To sign off on deploying Russian armed forces internationally; To set presidential elections; To remove the president from power (on the basis of evidence from the State Duma); To appoint justices of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Arbitration Court; To appoint and dismiss the Prosecutor General; To appoint and dismiss the deputy head of the Audit Chamber and half of its auditors. ******* #11 TimeEurope.com January 14, 2002 Slick Operators As their U.S. allies pursue a broader, more diverse energy market, the Russians are poised to deliver BY MARYANN BIRD It was all about oil, some critics of the Persian Gulf War argued more than a decade ago when U.S.-led forces mobilized to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. If Kuwait had only sand, they said, the U.S. would not have bothered to take on Saddam Hussein. Given the shattering events of Sept. 11, few opponents of the military strikes against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and its Taliban protectors have made a similar assertion regarding Afghanistan. While Kuwait indeed has considerable oil beneath its sand, Afghanistan produces and processes only a tiny quantity of crude oil and natural gas for in-country use. Still, even Afghanistan may have an energy future. The country sits strategically between the oil- and gas-rich Caspian region and the Arabian Sea, from which fuel could -- if it were deemed necessary and economical -- be transported to Pakistan, India and beyond, to the energy-hungry Far East. Floated in the mid-1990s, the idea of Afghan energy pipelines is now discredited by many oil experts. But Afghans, eager to rebuild their country's economy, are hoping it gets reconsidered. Afghanistan is just one of several countries eager for a role in what might be called the new world energy order, characterized by less reliance on Middle Eastern sources. Amid heightened concern over international terrorism and rising Islamic radicalism even in "friendly" countries of the Middle East, the U.S. -- which imports more than a quarter of its oil from the Persian Gulf -- wants to see leverage in the global energy market expanded beyond the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Russia -- a non-OPEC member and the world's largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia -- is at the top of the alternative suppliers list. "Russia is emerging as a separate nucleus of the energy equation," U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said on a recent visit to Moscow, where he met with his Russian counterpart Igor Yusufov. "We treat the Russian role as a very important one . . . and we believe it will be an expanded role in the future." Of that there is no doubt. What has been growing in recent years, notes Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and authority on the region, is a "battle for the vast oil and gas riches of landlocked Central Asia -- the last untapped reserves of energy in the world today." Equally important, Rashid writes in his timely best seller Taliban, has been "the intense competition between the regional states and Western oil companies as to who would build the lucrative pipelines which are needed to transport the energy to markets in Europe and Asia." This rivalry, he says, has become "a new Great Game," a throwback to the 19th century contest between Russia and Britain for control and domination in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Encouraged by the collapse of the Taliban and the establishment of a friendlier interim government in Kabul, the U.S. and Russia appear keen to foster this new energy order. "Russia," President Vladimir Putin said on a September visit to Germany, "stands ready to increase its oil exports in case of world conflicts." Having just resolved -- at least temporarily -- a spat with OPEC, which wanted production cuts by non-OPEC countries to boost sagging oil prices, Russia seeks to increase its lucrative export role, particularly to Japan, China and Korea. It plans to remain heavily involved in transporting oil and gas from former Soviet Central Asian republics, notably Kazakhstan, as well as from Russian territory. In late December, Putin opened phase one of an oil-loading facility at Primorsk, on the Gulf of Finland. The outlet for oil from the far-north Timan Pechora basin will bypass currently used ports in the former Soviet Baltic republics, particularly Latvia's Ventspils terminal. The Caspian region is also becoming a more significant fuel exporting area, according to U.S. Energy Department analysts, and the troubled Caucasus is a "potentially major world oil transit center." Proven oil reserves for the entire Caspian region are estimated at 17.5 billion to 34 billion barrels, comparable to those of the U.S. (22 billion) and the North Sea (17 billion). Natural gas reserves are believed to be even greater. Consequently, new oil and gas pipelines are being considered, negotiated, constructed and opened, while some older lines are being extended. Abraham's November visit to Russia, in fact, was arranged around the long-awaited official opening of a 1,580-km oil pipeline from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz oilfield to a Russian export terminal near Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. From there, the fuel goes by ship through the dangerously congested Bosporus and on to Europe. The Tengiz field is believed to be the world's sixth largest, sending nearly 600,000 barrels of oil a day through the pipeline in its initial stages, rising, perhaps, to about 1.5 million barrels in 2015. ChevronTexaco is the biggest customer of the $2.65 billion line. U.S. firms have invested more than $1 billion in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) project, which includes Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman and companies like Royal Dutch/Shell, ExxonMobil and Arco. Oil from other Kazakh and Russian fields is also expected to be shipped through the cpc line -- possibly amounting to a third of all Russia's petroleum exports. Projected at 4.74 million barrels a day this year, Russia's exports go to such countries as Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as to Central and Eastern Europe. While Russia provides only about 24% of Europe's natural gas needs, E.U. officials hope to double that. "With the cpc starting up, there is a surplus of capacity from Central Asia," says Laurent Ruseckas, London director for Caspian energy at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a U.S. consulting firm. That's bad news for Afghanistan. Notions of running pipelines through the country, he adds, "are dead, and they ain't coming back," because there is neither need nor economic justification. In the late 1990s, the U.S. energy company Unocal was a member of a consortium that briefly considered building a pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan, crossing western Afghanistan. Given the civil war then raging, the Taliban's control of most of the country and a host of political and economic factors, Unocol withdrew -- and has no plans to return. Farhad Ahad, of the Institute for Afghan Studies, says a gas pipeline "would be one of the better things that could happen to Afghanistan" in the next two or three years. In a changed world, where some of the ashes haven't yet cooled, the new energy order is taking shape. And if the U.S.-Russia romance cools? One of the pipelines on the drawing board is a 1,700-km line running from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Tbilisi, Georgia, to Ceyhan, Turkey. It could deliver 1 million barrels of crude oil a day beginning in 2004 -- independent of both Russia and the OPEC countries. ******* #12 Russia ratings improved under Putin; needs to overcome opposition - Moody's January 14, 2002 LONDON (AFX) - Moody's Investors Service said that Russia's foreign currency country ceiling was recently upgraded to Ba3 from B2, "due, in part, to a more stable political environment achieved by President Vladimir Putin." In a special report by Moody's vice president and senior credit analyst Jonathan Schiffer, the ratings agency said that further upgrades were dependent upon Putin's ability to implement further reforms despite the opposition from elements of the military and security establishments, local and regional officials and the new business "oligarchs." Although the odds are that Putin will continue to succeed in his various economic and foreign policy initiatives, his room for manoeuvre is also constrained by the varying interests and ideologies of different groups (regional governors, defence establishment, security forces, powerful and the wealthy new businessmen -- oligarchs), Moody's said. Of key importance is Putin's aim of Russian accession to the WTO. "If there is one decision that will force Russia to restructure its economy (apart from the commodity-exporting companies that have already restructured), it is accession to the WTO," it said. Russian membership would promote competition, which in turn would encroach on the activities of local administrations and oligarchs. Therefore, the strategic decision to join the WTO will produce a battle over details and lengths of transition periods for compliance with various regulations. It will mobilize oligarchs, regional administrations, and communist-nationalist opposition and bears careful monitoring, Moody's said. The ratings agency noted that, contrary to expectations when he succeeded Boris Yeltsin, Putin has "made inroads into the anarchic balkanization of Russian economic and political space at the expense of regional administrations," and has kept the oligarchs at arms-length. His administration has worked well with the parliament to push through meaningful structural reforms, with a coherent and sequential timetable in operation for the foreseeable future, it said. He also benefits from practically no organized and effective opposition, either as leader of Russia or as prime mover in decisive strategic shifts in economic and foreign policy orientations. Although opposition from regional authorities is growing, in response to what they deem interference in their own personal fiefdoms, Moody's noted that this is checked by "the Presidential Administration's well-documented dossier of acts of corruption on the part of regional leaderships." Another strand of opposition to Putin is born out of the desire to rebuild and expand Russia's military-industrial complex as the core of a "new economy," with more focus on China as a military and economic partner than Putin's broadly pro-Western approach, Moody's said. This is a view shared by some members of the defence establishment, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and with a group of former security services individuals known as the "militarists," who share Putin's background and are trusted colleagues within the administration, it noted. However, given the obvious association with the failures of the Soviet era, the overall strategy has limited appeal, it said. ****** #13 U.S. Missile Defense No Threat to Russia for a Decade, Says Russian Negotiator Interfax MOSCOW, Jan 14, 2002 -- Russia will keep its nuclear triad - the ground, naval and air components - despite its plans to radically cut strategic offensive armaments to 1,500 nuclear warheads. "The triad is the most optimal structure of the strategic nuclear forces and we are not planning to give it up," First Deputy Chief of the General Staff Col-Gen Yuriy Baluyevskiy told Interfax on Monday [14 January]. He said, however, that priority will be given to the naval component of the triad. "In all our long-term plans of military advancement the second, the naval, component is the priority," he said. "In the next five to seven or maybe 10 years the state of the ground component of the strategic nuclear forces will fully satisfy us," Baluyevskiy said. He said that the U.S. decision to build a missile defense system "will not pose a military threat to us in the next decade". "A defense system is always less expensive than an offensive one," he said, adding that Russia will not resort to "asymmetric actions" in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty. "It would be possible to take the road of increasing the number of deployed missiles, and nuclear warheads on them, but this is a road to nowhere, a new stage in the arms race. Russia does not need this road and will not take it," the official said. ****** #14 BBC 14 January 2002 Caspian sturgeon stocks plummet By the BBC's Chloe Arnold in Baku, Azerbaijan Caviar, a highly prized delicacy produced from the eggs of mature sturgeon, could be in danger of vanishing from the shelves of up-market stores in the West. The biggest-ever scientific survey looking at sturgeon populations in the Caspian Sea has revealed that the fish are rapidly disappearing and could soon become extinct. Four of the five Caspian states took part in the survey last year - the most in-depth look yet at sturgeon numbers in the Caspian Sea. Scientists from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Russia spent six weeks trawling across the sea using state-of-the-art radar equipment from Norway to monitor the fish. They said the most worrying finding was an abnormally large proportion of young sturgeon in comparison to more mature fish. It is the older sturgeon that produce the eggs used to make caviar - known here as black gold - and as a result they are being over-fished. The survey also reveals alarmingly small numbers of beluga fish, the rarest species of sturgeon. Poachers' lucrative trade The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has ordered a partial moratorium on fishing for sturgeon in the Caspian Sea. But experts say this will do little to stop poaching, which is thought to exceed official catch levels by up to 15 times. Caviar smuggling is a lucrative business in the impoverished former Soviet republics, as the roe fetches up to US $1,000 a kilogram in the West. The Caspian is the source of 80-90% of the world's caviar, but for the last 20 years, sturgeon numbers have been falling steadily. *******