ITSSD Journal on Evolving Russia

Russian Internet Websites Are Rapidly Being Consumed by Pro-Kremlin Oligarchs - Does the Kremlin Have a Renewed Appetite for Censorship?

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:47:00 +0000

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/osc/runet.pdf

Kremlin Allies' Expanding Control of Runet Provokes Only Limited Opposition

(See "Internet in Russia", Wikipedia, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Russia )

Open Source Center https://www.opensource.gov/

28 February 2010

Pro-Kremlin oligarchs have gradually acquired significant stakes in the most popular websites in Russia, apparently seeking profitable investments, while augmenting other government moves to establish control over the Russian Internet. While specific population segments are intensely alarmed about Internet censorship and take steps to expose or thwart government efforts, the majority of the public is unconcerned about freedom of the press or Internet and is unlikely to oppose censorship of the Internet. With the government closely controlling TV and much of the press, the Internet has been the main venue for expression of opposition views, and social networking sites, which have become extremely popular, have developed outside
government control.

Television remains the leading and most popular source of information in Russia and the Russian Government maintains tight control of it for this reason, with the most popular channels being owned by the state or progovernment oligarchs. However, social networking sites have grown dramatically in popularity in recent years and are now the most popular websites in the Russian Internet. Sites such as VKontakte, a Facebook clone, Odnoklassniki, a Classmates.com clone, and LiveJournal, a blogging platform, now attract a monthly audience of many millions of users each. The Kremlin has taken notice of the increasing significance of the Internet and social media sites in particular and has begun enacting laws and policies aimed at giving it greater control. Kremlin-friendly oligarchs, who may also be motivated by the profitability of these sites, have also begun investing heavily into the top social networking and Internet outlets, potentially creating a situation similar to that of the national television networks. Although some independent bloggers and press sources raised concerns at the growing government involvement in the Internet, it is doubtful that this would create public outcry as most Russians actually support some degree of censorship of the Internet.

Oligarchs' Takeover

Over the last several years, progovernment oligarchs have accumulated significant stakes in the leading portals of the Russian Internet. Between them, they own the majority of the most popular Russian social networking sites and the majority of the most popular Russian websites (see Appendix B for a list of the top 100 sites). While media outlets owned by government companies or allies have not yet shown signs of censorship, the leadership and owners of these Russian investment companies are close to the Kremlin and may be willing to cede their business interests to government priorities.

Metals magnate Alisher Usmanov, whom experts consider to be close to the Kremlin, purchased half of SUP, the owner of Russia's most popular blogging platform LiveJournal, in June 2008. He recently increased his stake in Digital Sky Technologies -- a Russian Internet investment company that owns controlling interests in top-ranked Russian social media portals VKontakte, Mail.ru and Odnoklassniki -- to 35%, making him the single-largest stakeholder (Russkiy Newsweek, 17 August 2009).

Oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, who is known to cooperate with the Kremlin, owns RosBiznesKonsalting (RBC), which has been quietly gobbling up Russian Internet (Runet) domains, holding 21% of the Runet's sites, according to its last annual report in 2007, including Loveplanet.ru, the second-most popular online dating service in the Runet.

Pro-Putin Oligarch Vladimir Potanin owns Prof-Media, which owns Rambler.ru, one of Russia's largest Internet portals featuring a search engine, an information portal, an Internet rating service, and other web services (Interfax, 9 February). Together, Rambler and investment firm Finam own Begun, the largest Russian seller of context-based ads in the Russian market. Prof-Media also owns popular Internet news site Lenta.ru.

Gazprom-Media, which is controlled by Vladimir Putin's close friend Yuriy Kovalchuk,a bought RuTube, a popular Russian clone of YouTube in March 2008 (RIA Novosti, 6 March 2008). Indicating this was part of a wider Gazprom-Media initiative, Director Nikolay Senkevich stated his company had allotted $100 million to acquire various Internet resources (Kommersant.ru, 9 July 2007).b

Limited Public Outcry

Although some independent bloggers and press sources raised concerns at the growing government presence in the Internet, the public is probably unaware of the extent to which the Runet is owned by Kremlin allies. Most buy-outs were not well publicized, appearing only in specialized business dailies that reported only the fact of the deal.

Moreover, most Russians are not overly concerned about censorship in general or censorship of the Internet. Most actually support censoring the Internet, believing official rhetoric stating it would cut down on child pornography, hate speech, or extremism, which may partially explain the lack of public reaction to the various Kremlin attempts at gaining control of the Russian Internet. Those who do react negatively to threats to Internet freedom tend to be opposition members or human rights activists who would be directly affected by censorship.

Independent print media are often subject to political and economic pressure, and selfcensorship by journalists and editors is common. An Intermedia and Levada Center poll carried out in 2008 found that the vast majority of the population do not express concern about this and do not read these sources.c
According to a 2008 poll by the Kremlin-Influenced All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion on Social and Economic Questions (VTsIOM), nearly half of all Russians believe that information on the Internet should be regulated. The main argument given for this view was that the Internet is filled with "dirt" and "trash" and that it is accessible to children and has a bad influence on them. When asked what should be censored, the majority of respondents named child pornography (89%), followed by 83% in favor of blocking terrorist organizations and extremist content. Many (41%) believed that the sites of political opposition movements should be blocked (9 December 2008).

Regardless of their stance on censorship, according to Gazeta.ru, Russians are not likely to change their social networking use over privacy concerns. The director of marketing and sales at Rambler Media, Anton Terkhov, stated that "discussions have come up in the Runet that data from social networks are being used by government structures, but these conversations have not led to users closing their accounts. Quite the opposite, the popularity of the services has continued to grow." The head editor of Yandex, Yelena Kolmanovskaya, had a similar opinion stating: "Talk of the possible decline in popularity of these services is doubtful" (26 March 2009).

Protests Over Buyouts

There have been limited protests over the buyouts, but reaction centered on well-publicized deals involving major Internet outlets and known Kremlin supporters and appeared mainly in opposition publications and politically active bloggers' journals.

In March 2008, Gazprom-Media purchased the popular Russian clone of YouTube, video-sharing platform RuTube. This prompted Oleg Kozyrev, a well-known opposition blogger, and Oleg Salmanov, a reporter for the online opposition paper The New Times, to protest: "The Russian Internet community is following with alarm the social networks passing under the control of those who are loyal to the authorities and responsive to their requests. Many still remember what the federal media were like before Vladimir Putin arrived in the Kremlin. Yes, the purchase by state corporations (or by businessmen close to the Kremlin) of large media does not always and not necessarily lead to them stopping being objective. But the authorities gain the legitimate opportunity 'to switch off the button' in case of something. The networks only have to be in the necessary hands" (17 March 2008).

Usmanov's June 2008 purchase of 50% of LiveJournal from SUP prompted speculation about censorship, but also criticism of SUP's management of the resource. Cyxymu,d a blogger and professor in Tbilisi, Georgia, expressed fears that this was part of a plan by the authorities to rein in freedom of speech on the Internet: "That means everything will be under the control of the FSB [Federal Security Service]. Or more accurately under greater control than earlier" (22 June 2008).

In September 2009, Yandexe owners gave a "golden share" to government-owned Sberbank, giving the bank the right to veto any sale of more than 25% of Yandex and ensuring this sensitive resource remains in government-friendly hands (Russian Newsweek, 17 August 2009). In response, The Moscow Times, an English-language daily owned by Finnish company International Media, wrote: "While Yandex's concessions have been minor and apparently voluntary, Internet users fear that they could lead to restrictions like those in China, where access to pro-democracy and foreign news websites is severely limited" (26 November 2009).

In December 2009, various media reported that DST was negotiating to buy ICQ from AOL in a deal that would give DST control of roughly half of the Russian messaging market (Lenta.ru, 15 December 2009).f Blogger response centered on having to pay for the previously free service instead of any risk of monitoring or censorship. Blogg Aleks Eksler (exler) stated: "If DST buys ICQ, we'll have to leave this platform for good because, just like 'Zhadnoklassniki' [greedyclassmates] it's easy to predict what will happen. First they'll forbid any alternative clients so that Internet chatters will have to use the official client where they can put ads everywhere. Then they'll start the onetization of the service." Others responded with alternative chat platforms and ebated whether or not ICQ would cease to be free (15 December 2009).

Protests Over Government Moves

Officials have made numerous attempts to pass laws seeking to regulate the Internet. They have also been accused of using laws covering the mass media or extremism to censor the unet. Such methods have met with significant resistance from the opposition and human ights activists, and the government has scaled back or rejected some provisions of the controversial laws.

The Joint Commission on National Policy and Cooperation of Governments and Religious Unions of the Federation Council announced a bill with planned amendments to the law on mass media on 11 February 2008. If passed in its original form, the amendments would have given any electronic media which has more than 1,000 hits per day the status of mass media, thus making them subject to laws on mass media such as the law on extremism. Amid controversy and outcry provoked by news of the draft, supporters of the bill attempted to assuage fears that it would lead to censorship, promising that the law would not affect sites that are "not information sources."

Bloggers expressed varying degrees of alarm over the potential danger the law would pose to their community, because so many of their blogs receive more than 1,000 hits per day. Blogger may-antiwar wrote: "As soon as a site becomes mass media, we will be threatened not only with immediate shutdown but also unpleasant personal sanctions under the law 'On extremism' and we will become political prisoners. They have declared war on our resource" ( 27 February 2008). Blogger Viking_nord called the initiative "extremely stupid" and claimed that "over the last five years there were 20 such initiatives and no one ever passed one of them" (11 February 2008).

Independent Internet sites, like bloggers, expressed their concern that the law would lead to the closure of Internet resources and ridiculed the 1,000 hits-per-day figure (Newsru.com, 12 February 2008; Strana.ru, 11 February 2008).

On 11 February, Vladimir Slutsker, the deputy chairperson of the commission, gave a very broad definition of sites to be covered: "Any regularly updated Internet site can be included in the understanding of mass media, including personal diaries, various forums, and chats including, for example, dating sites" (Gzt.ru, 11 February). However on 12 February, he backed off, stating: "The amendments to the law 'On the Mass Media,' which were discussed today by the Internet community, only concern sites which are, in fact, Internet mass media although they are not registered at the moment...The blogosphere, dating sites, and search engines will not fall under that law because they are not mass media" (SMI.ru).

Protest Over Court Case

A 7 July 2008 trial convicting Savva Terentyev on charges of extremism, the first criminal prosecution in Russia for comments posted in a blog, prompted warnings that the legal system would be used to target bloggers critical of local or federal authorities. Terentyev, who admitted authorship of the comment but pleaded not guilty to charges of extremism, received a suspended one-year prison sentence under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation -- inciting hatred or enmity (ITAR-TASS, 7 July 2008; Interfax, 14 July 2008). In his comment, he railed against the police, describing them as "filth" and saying that a "corrupt cop should be ceremonially burnt daily" in the central square of every city.

Political columnist Valeriy Vyzhutovich claimed that the Terentyev "show trial" was a "test run" to gauge how Russian society would react to the future imposition of restrictions on freedom of speech on the Internet (Politkom.ru, 25 April 2008).

Terentyev's lawyer, Vladislav Kosnyrev, warned that now under Article 282 "practically any statement can, if desired, be a pretext for criminal prosecution." Suranov added that "LiveJournal users need to know: The more you show interest in public life, then the greater the interest the law enforcement agencies will have in you" (The New Times, 14 July 2008).

Terentyev was not pardoned, but in a subsequent trial a 29-year-old senior teacher at the Kuzbass State Technical University, Dmitriy Solovyev, who was accused of inciting hatred and hostility against a social group for his negative statements against FSB and MVD [Interior Ministry] employees in entries on his LiveJournal page was not found guilty (Forum.msk, 13 January).

Criticism of Outsourcing of Attacks

The Kremlin is known to use its youth groups and other methods to carry out "information confrontation" in the Runet.g h Opposition Internet users are aware of this practice and take action to expose, criticize, and thwart them.

Oleg Kozyrev noted the trend toward more frequent and organized attacks on opposition videos on YouTube, stating: "It is interesting that over the last several days, a ton of identical comments [from users] with accounts created at suspiciously similar times have appeared on YouTube. They usually surf opposition videos and post various types of negative messages. Obviously brigades that sometimes work in the blogs and sometimes on forums have now started working on the video service" (Oleg-kozyrev.livejournal.com, 30 November 2007).

During recent protests in Kaliningrad, participants used Internet media to publicize the protest and smaller preceding events. In several forums, and on YouTube videos, users called out the activities of progovernment "trolls"i who ridiculed the protest and attempted to counter the protesters' criticisms of the authorities. User Legis80 struck at all several users he called "Mister trolls" who were spamming the comments section of the Novyy Kaliningrad paper's article on the protests, telling them to "stick their tongues in deeper and stop yapping." On Rugrad.eu, two of the organizers of the 30 January protest, Konstantin Doroshok and Aleksandr Agiyevich, were forced to debate two users, Ivanka and Valter 100_lyt, who alleged that Doroshok was staging the protests in Kaliningrad to further his own business interests and that people were being offered financial inducements to attend protest rallies. Agiyevich's response to the "trolls" was to tell other users to ignore them, but Doroshok decided to do some detective work and said that Ivanka and Valter 100_lyt, who claimed he was a student who had been given R100 to attend the rally on 12 December, were operating from the same IP address. Doroshok concluded that they were, in fact, one and the same person (BBC Monitoring, 9 February).j

Internet users have taken to creating lists of bots that spam their blogs. Orly74 recommended banning a list of 40 users from opposition journals in connection with attacks on other opposition journals (16 October 2009). Out of frustration with what he said was LiveJournal's lack of will to stop bots, Andrey Malgin (avmalgin), writer and Kremlin critic and well-known blogger, started a list of bots and gave users instructions on how to ban them. Readers added to the list in comments and sympathized with his frustrations (30 January 2008). Oleg Kozyrev started a list of bots to ban on 9 October 2008. User Botolov's entire blog is devoted to stopping bots. He maintains a list of bots updated nearly daily by other users and helps to ban them.k l m Opposition users are also savvy at circumventing the Kremlin's monitoring and censorship efforts.

In an interview with Global Voices Online, a project of the Berkman Center that translates blogs from around the world, Roman Dobrokhotov, the leader of a democratic Russian youth movement "We" (My), stated: "All our activities are conducted via the Internet. The main mechanism that creates and maintains our movement is a Google group. We consider it relatively secure. We use an encrypted connection. We only add people that we know…. In addition to Google groups, we use Twitter. But we do it during our real-life actions, not before. When you deal with an opposition movement it is important that your friends can always follow you in case something bad happens." He continued: "The authorities have a legal right to ask for any information from Internet providers. They have access to everything we send through SORM 2 system.n But our information is encrypted and it will take a lot of time for them to decode it. The authorities can also create Internet filters or just shut down blogging services like LiveJournal. But we can always work through other platforms. We can also use anonymizers and other tools like proxy services" (Globalvoicesonline.org, 20 December 2009).

Suspicions Over New Domain

Although the .__ domain (Cyrillic language domain) is touted as being aimed at making the Internet more accessible to more Russians, some bloggers and press sources have pointed out that it may serve to isolate Russian Internet users from the rest of the World Wide Web, forming a kind of "cyber ghetto."

In an interview with Rosbalt news agency, Ilya Ponomarev, an avid blogger and member of the Duma Committee on Information Technology and Communications, called the new domain "a step towards the isolation of the Russian segment of the Internet from the international Internet space" and stated that it was "a harmful and wrong course" (ilya-ponomarev; Rosbalt, 25 November 2009). One commentator to Ponomarev's Rosbalt interview debated Ponomarev, stating that the new domain was a positive step because it would make the Internet accessible to people who do not know Latin characters and that people who wanted to speak with foreigners would still have Latin domains to use, according to blogger dilesoft (ilya-ponomarev, 25 November).
User illka worried that sites on the Cyrillic domain would be subject to a great deal of pressure and unable to change their registrar to another provider and that once people became used to domain names in Russian, they would not be willing to go to "that [Latin character domain] Internet" because there would be "nothing comprehensible written there" (ilya-ponomarev, 25 November).
Another blogger, di09en, researched the newly registered ____.__ (blog.rf) domain and claimed that it was registered in the name of the "Special Communications and Information Service of the Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation." Commentators stated that it was actually the Federal Protective Service of Russia, a department of the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information (FAPSI) (ilya-ponomarev, 25 November).

Implications

The Russian Government does not need to own the Runet in order to monitor or control it. It has numerous laws and policies in place that allow it to limit or threaten open discussion on the Internet. Portals owned by Kremlin allies do not yet exhibit signs of censorship, but their acquisitions provide officials an additional lever to control the content of the Runet if the Kremlin feels threatened. The Kremlin is also developing the ability to shape the online discourse using such organizations as the Kremlin School of Bloggers and its various youth groups.

Moreover, many Russians actually favor some degree of censorship of the Runet and any public protest against government control would therefore most likely come from the largely distrusted and marginalized opposition. The lack of public concern over the loss of yet another independent source of information could lead to even greater state control of information and its citizens' beliefs.

Still, information may seep through any Kremlin efforts to censor the Internet as non-Russian portals such as Google, YouTube and Wikipedia are gaining popularity,o and opposition users are very savvy in regard to circumventing censorship efforts.

Appendix A

SUP

SUP is an Internet media investment company founded in the summer of 2006 by Russian billionaire Aleksandr Mamut and US media entrepreneur Andrew Paulson. It expanded aggressively in the new media sector, buying up a sports website and Internet ad agencies before buying LiveJournal in December 2007 in a deal estimated at $30 to $100 million (Russia Today, 4 December 2007). SUP leadership included Anton Nosik, one of the pioneers in Russian website development and a famous blogger.p As of 1 September 2009, SUP owned Gazeta.ru, LiveJournal.ru, and Championat.ru (Kommersant).

Mamut is a longtime prominent Russian banker who developed close ties to the family of President Boris Yeltsin and top officials of his Presidential Administration and also top officials of President Putin's administration. This prompted many expressions of concern among bloggers and other observers that his purchase of LiveJournal would increase Kremlin influence over the blogging platform.q

Digital Sky Technologies (DST)

Yuriy Milner and Grigoriy Finger formed DST in 2005 with their own money and funds from outside investors, which now include Goldman Sachs and Alisher Usmanov. While DST continues to be controlled by the two founders, Usmanov now owns 35% of the company, making him the single-largest shareholder.

DST is a dominant force in the Runet, owning the most popular websites in the CIS, including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Armenia, and estimates that over 70% of all page views in the Russian-language Internet are on its companies' websites (Dst-global.com, 2 February). In Russia, DST owns a significant stake in VKontakte, a Facebook clone and the largest social network site in Russia, and a controlling interest in Forticom group, the owner of Odnoklassniki.ru, a very popular Russian clone of Classmates.com and third-most popular social network in Russia. DST owns more than half of the second-most popular site overall, Mail.ru, which offers a variety of services including news, e-mail, a search engine, directories, chats, job services, blogs, role-playing games, and messaging. Mail.ru also controls several other important Internet projects. Because of the prevalence of the Runet in the former Soviet space, these sites are also the most popular sites in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Moldova. Outside of Russia, DST owns Seznam.cz, a Czech social networking site; a majority share in Nasza-klasa.pl, a Polish clone of Classmates.com, and a significant stake in Estonian jobs portal CV Keksus, the number two site in Estonia, based on a Gemius research report from January 2009. The company's 75% interest in Forticom also gives it control of some of the top portals in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia -- One.lt, One.lv, and One.ee.

Usmanov is the single-largest stakeholder of DST (Russkiy Newsweek, 17 August 2009). According to Finam expert Leonid Delitsyn, "Alisher Usmanov is not an investor for whom state interests are an alien concept… When his structures acquire a media asset this is seen as a deal that has been done with the state's approval" (Infox.ru, 3 July, 2009). According to Russkiy Newsweek, the Russian version of international news magazine Newsweek, the Internet community views Usmanov as "an outright government surrogate" (17 August 2009). Usmanov is considered especially close to President Medvedev. For a long time he was a top official of Gazprom where Medvedev was chairman.

Usmanov has been building a media empire since August 2006, buying the respected business daily Kommersant, the antigovernment website Gazeta.ru, and sports channel 7TV in late 2006. He announced on 7 November 2006 in Vedomosti that he intended to create a multimedia holding company of TV channels, newspapers, radio stations, and websites and told Vremya Novostey he aimed to create a media empire like Bloomberg's (28 December 2006). Usmanov has ambitious aims, specifically in the social networking sphere. For example, he launched the NewTube.ru video site in June 2008 to challenge Gazprom-Media's RuTube (Kommersant, 3 June 2008). In addition, in 2008, he attempted to buy 10% of Yandex in a deal that later failed (Lenta.ru, 28 May 2009).

DST Company President Yuriy Milner was also recently appointed to the Presidential Commission for the Modernization and Technological Development of the Russian Economy, whose mission is the "reduction of the Russian economy's dependence on world economic conditions and the development of high technology" (Politkom.ru, 25 May 2009).

RosBiznesKonsalting (RBC)

RosBiznesKonsalting was created in 1992 and is an Internet-holding company. RBC owns, among others, news portals Rbk.ru, Utro.ru, and Cnews.ru. It also owns Loveplanet.ru, the second-largest dating service in Russia, Quiet Internet Pager, a free instant messenger, and Fishki.net, a top humor and entertainment website.

Prokhorov has a history of cooperating or supporting government initiatives. For example, he came out in favor of businesses paying their full taxes, a rarity in Russia, and registered himself as living in Yeruda in the Krasnoyarsk region, where his mining company Polyus Gold is located, in order to support the region with his taxes. A spokesman for Prokhorov's investment vehicle Onexim explained: "Given the difficult economic period, one of the main social responsibilities of a business is to pay its taxes in full, and it would seem proper to pay them where the main sources of income are " (RIA Novosti, 22 May 2009).

Prof-Media

One of Russia's largest media conglomerates, Vladimir Potanin's Prof-Media was created by the oligarch's Oneksimbank in late 1997 to run Russkiy Telegraf, Izvestiya, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and other papers. In March 2003, Prof-Media purchased 35% of the Dutch-owned Independent Media publishing house which owned The Moscow Times and Vedomosti.r Prof-Media later changed its strategy, selling off its print media, especially political newspapers, and buying up entertainment television channels and Internet sites.s

Potanin purchased Rambler.ru in November 2006, which, along with his news websites Lenta.ru and Afisha.ru, figures in the top 100 Runet sites. Prof-Media and investment company Finam own Begun, the leading Russian company in context-based ads. According to numerous sources, advertising is the most important source of revenue to websites, making up, for example, 80% of the revenue of Yandex (Vedomosti, 30 December 2009). Consistent with the government's policy of keeping important companies in Russian hands, the Federal Antimonopoly Service recently blocked an attempt by Google to buy Begun, citing inaccuracies in the paperwork. Some analysts believe the decision was actually motivated by concern at losing control over a Russian market leader (Vedomosti, 24 September 2009). Informative business daily Kommersant's sources in the market said the deal was not approved "because the government came out against the sale of Begun to the American Google Inc" (9 April 2009).

Despite rocky relations with the Kremlin at the start of Vladimir Putin's presidency, Potanin is now believed to have a good relationship with Putin and the government. Rafael Akopov, the president of Prof-Media, supported the government's right to deem Internet portals "strategic"t
and to determine policy on them. He stated: "The Internet is a strategic sector and the government has every right to determine policies in it" (Vedomosti, 9 April 2008).

Gazprom Media

Gazprom-Media was set up by Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom to manage its media holdings, including the popular national TV channel NTV and Ekho Moskvy radio, and has become one of Russia's biggest media conglomerates. Its parent company, Gazprom is partially owned by the Russian Government. Yuriy Kovalchuk, a longtime Putin friend with ties to Medvedev, controls Gazprom-Media.u

Yandex

Yandex is partially owned by Ru-Net Holdings, which was founded by Baring Vostok Capital Partners and the Moscow investment company United Financial Group. Leonid Boguslavsky owns 50% of Ru-Net Holdings and has served as its Chairman and CEO since April 2001. Ru-Net Holdings owns 35% of Yandex, which is currently the top-ranked website in Russia and its dominant search engine. Yandex's director, Arkadiy Volozh, controls 30% of the company and the remainder of Yandex is owned by Yandex's managers and several other investment companies including Baring Vostok Capital Partners and Tiger Global (Bfm.ru, 11 September 2009). Yandex owns popular portals Narod.ru and Moi Krug, a business portal similar to LinkedIn. Ru-Net holdings also owns 50% of largest Internet store, Ozon.ru (Kommersant, 1 September 2009).

In September 2009, Yandex owners gave a "golden share" in the company to Sberbank. This special share, which cannot be sold without the approval of Yandex's board of directors, gives Sberbank the right to veto any sale of more than 25% of Yandex, thus ensuring this sensitive resource remains in government-friendly hands (Russkiy Newsweek, 17 August 2009). An unnamed source of the respected business daily Vedomosti in the federal government stated: "Yandex is an infrastructural company and the government is not indifferent as to who controls it. Sberbank will become the de facto representative of the government and will be able to prevent the transfer of Yandex to the control of foreigners" (24 September).

Arkadiy Volozh, owner and director of Yandex stated: "We cannot fail to take the government's position into account and believe it is necessary to develop a legal mechanism that will consider national interest when making large deals involving Yandex" (Interfax, 24 September 2009).

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http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/osc/russian-media.pdf
Russia -- Source Descriptors of Key Russian Media

Open Source Center

December 6, 2007

The following are source descriptors of key Russian media, including news agencies (page 1), publications (page 3), radio (page 8), television (page 9), and websites (page 11). Television dominates the media environment in Russia, with most Russians getting their news from the two state-owned channels. There is greater variety of ownership and content in publications and websites, but these have smaller audiences than television.1

Russian Natural Gas Python Seeks to Squeeze the Economic Life Out of Europe

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:49:00 +0000

http://www.rusnet.nl/news/2009/07/03/businesseconomics01.shtml /businesseconomics01.shtml Gazprom Seeks Global Deals to Build Gas Grid Encircling Europe

By Stephen Bierman

Bloomberg

RUSNET

July 3, 2009

OAO Gazprom, the Russian company that ships a quarter of Europe’s gas, is seeking supply deals in the Caspian, Africa and around the world to anchor its lead in areas where European buyers may turn to rival producers.

“We would like to make the company global in terms of upstream presence,” Boris Ivanov, head of Gazprom EP International BV, said at the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Doha, Qatar. “We are trying to position Gazprom in the areas where we think we need to be strategically present, like North Africa, West Africa, Latin America and Asia.”

Gazprom, the world’s largest gas exporter, is facing moves from European Union countries to diversify supplies as nations seek to cut reliance on Russia. By forging partnerships and snapping up production assets in gas-pumping nations, the company can add alternative sources of fuel while stamping out competition for customers in Europe, its biggest export market.

“The criteria are very simple: the availability of hydrocarbon reserves, proximity to the markets where we can bring it and, since our projects are time-consuming and capital- intensive, a friendly relationship with the host governments,” Ivanov said June 30.

Gazprom held talks in Algeria last month on developing the trans-Saharan pipeline from Nigeria, where it has agreed to bid for gas fields through a new joint venture and build a link to the north of the country. In the Caspian region, Gazprom signed a “milestone” deal to buy gas from Azerbaijan, threatening European plans to add the country as a source of supply.

Global Gazprom Grid

“Russia/Gazprom is now involved in all of the major gas- producing countries that can supply Europe,” Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib, said by e-mail. “In political terms the Iron Curtain is gone. In energy terms, it is being replaced with a Gazprom gas grid that may stretch unbroken from Nigeria via North Africa, the Gulf and Central Asia all the way to the Arctic Circle.”

[See Reticulated Python Fact File, accessible at: http://www.snakes-uncovered.com/Reticulated_Python.html "The name "Python" can be traced back to Greek mythology. 'Python' often depicted as a "serpent" was the earth-dragon of Delphi which was consequently slain by Appollo. "Reticulatus" refers to the complex "netlike" geometric patterns that extended dorsally along the snake's body...These snakes are powerful constrictors and possess no venom... "; See also Terry Judd, Aggressive Python Killed by Trooper, Muskegon Chronicle (Aug. 19, 2008) accessible at: http://www.mlive.com/news/chronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1219157109111170.xml&coll=8 ].

Russia, holder of the world’s largest gas reserves and a recent entrant to the market for liquefied natural gas, met fellow members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum this week in Doha to discuss a joint budget and appoint senior officials. Consuming countries have voiced concern that the forum’s members will club together to decide investment and output, modeling the group on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

A “gas OPEC” would be the “final part of that jigsaw,” Weafer said, referring to state-owned Gazprom’s plan to have a role in all the biggest gas-producing nations. Russia has said the aim of the gas exporters group isn’t to fix prices.

Reciprocal Deals

Russia has been able to use access to its own ample hydrocarbon resources as a negotiating tool in talks with governments and energy producers overseas. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said June 19 that foreign oil producers seeking to operate in Russia should offer Russian companies participation in projects abroad in exchange.

The following week, the government invited Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the European oil producer that operates from Canada to West Africa, to cooperate in developing Gazprom’s Sakhalin-3 and Sakhalin-4 offshore deposits in the Russian Far East.

“Russia is bartering with Shell to get into its existing Nigeria business and ramp up Africa quickly,” Weafer said. “Sakhalin-3 and 4 are signs of goodwill.”

Gazprom is also contending with competition from producers of liquefied natural gas, a business untapped by the Moscow- based company until this year, as a gas surplus in the U.S. forces LNG exporters to seek EU markets for their fuel.

Divert LNG

Trinidad & Tobago has said it reduced its proportion of LNG shipments to the U.S. to 39 percent this year from 69 percent in 2008 as a result of falling prices there. Exports to Europe from the Caribbean nation grew 50 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to International Energy Agency data.

The increase in Europe-bound cargoes followed a payment dispute between Russia and Ukraine in January that cut supplies through that country for two weeks and prompted calls in the EU for swifter diversification of energy routes.

The growth in U.S. gas supply has been led by so-called unconventional resources, fuel that’s difficult and costly to extract. Rising production of gas from shale, for example, has reduced U.S. dependence on LNG imports, leaving Trinidad & Tobago looking for alternative markets, Energy Minister Conrad Enill told reporters at the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.

Qatari Expansion

Qatar, the world’s biggest producer of LNG, is also encroaching on Gazprom’s traditional markets. The Persian Gulf state, poised to more than double LNG output to 77 million tons by 2011, has signed its first accord to ship the fuel to eastern Europe, which depends on Gazprom for most of its gas supply.

Qatar signed a contract this week to send 1 million tons of LNG to Poland, which gets more than two-thirds of its gas from the former Soviet Union. Qatar will deliver the LNG, or gas that’s been cooled to a liquid for shipment by tanker, by 2014.

Gazprom’s Ivanov dismissed suggestions that an increase of suppliers may threaten the company’s position in Europe.

“In terms of the European market, the more real suppliers that are present on the market - not the brokers, not the mediators - companies and countries with equity gas, the more stable the market is,” he said. “LNG, of which Qatar has plenty and is planning to increase production, is an important part of the energy balance in Europe. We don’t think of it as a threat or hostile.”

Gazprom in February entered the increasingly global market for LNG by opening Russia’s first liquefaction plant on Sakhalin Island, in partnership with Shell. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on June 27 invited The Hague-based Shell to participate in the Sakhalin-3 oil and gas venture and also plans LNG projects in the Arctic Yamal peninsula with the Anglo-Dutch company.

Putin-Obama-Medvedev Menage a Trois

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:49:00 +0000

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl e/2009/07/04/AR2009070402115.html?wprss=rss_world

Russia Presents Test for Obama

By Michael A. Fletcher and Philip P. Pan

Washington Post

July 5, 2009

President Obama is scheduled to leave Washington tonight on a week-long trip that will help determine whether his personal popularity and fresh policy approaches can yield concrete results on difficult issues including arms control, missile defense and nuclear nonproliferation.

After seeking support for U.S. policies from allies in Europe and appealing for a new relationship with the Muslim world in Cairo on previous trips, Obama arrives in Moscow tomorrow for his first foray into high-profile, nuts-and-bolts negotiations with the leader of a nation that might be deemed an unfriendly rival.

On Wednesday, Obama will travel to L'Aquila, Italy, where he will meet with leaders of the world's major industrial powers. Climate change and the continued shaky global economy

are expected to dominate the agenda. He is also to meet with Pope Benedict XVI.

On Friday, Obama will go to Ghana, where he is expected to highlight that nation's burgeoning democratic tradition and to deliver a speech on his administration's goals for the developing world.

Shortly after taking office, the Obama administration made clear that it wants to "reset" relations between the United States and Russia, which had deteriorated under President George W. Bush. During Obama's first meeting with Russian President

Dmitry Medvedev, in London in April, the two agreed to a broad statement of cooperation on numerous issues.

Both the White House and the Kremlin hope to build on that with a summit in Moscow, and agreements on subjects including Afghanistan and nuclear proliferation are expected to be unveiled. But fundamental differences remain on key issues that have strained U.S.-Russian relations.

Medvedev wants U.S. pledges to scrap a missile defense system in Eastern Europe and to rule out military alliances with the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine. Obama wants Russia to back tough sanctions against Iran if diplomatic efforts to curb its nuclear program fail. Neither president has indicated any willingnes

s to yield.

"We're not going to reassure or give or trade anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense," said Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs. "We're going to define our national interests, and by that I also mean the interests of our allies in Europe with reference to these two particular questions."

Sergei Prikhodko, Medvedev's c

hief foreign policy adviser, struck a similar tone. "Saying that it will be easy to move forward would mean deluding ourselves," he told reporters. "The domestic agendas of both leaders and their agendas in dealings with allies do not always coincide. Sometimes, they contradict each other directly or indirectly. But the question is . . . whether we want to expand mutual understanding or focus on defending our own positions on sensitive issues."

Obama is scheduled to meet on Tuesday with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom analysts called the preeminent power in Russian politics. Obama told the Associated Press last

week that the former Russian president must move beyond a Cold War approach to relations with the United States.

The willingness of Obama and Medvedev to compromise will be tested when they discuss a treaty to replace the landmark START I nuclear arms control pact, which expires in December.

The United States and Russia control more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. After three months of talks, negotiators have agreed to modest reductions below the limits of 1,700 to 2,200 warheads established by the 2002 Treaty of Mosc

ow. But they remain deadlocked on how to count and limit the number of "delivery systems," or missiles and heavy bombers, that each nation can keep.

Medvedev publicly declared two weeks ago that no treaty is possible unless "the United States lifts Russia's concerns" about its plans to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Obama has not decided what to do about the system, said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to discuss internal deliberations publicly.

The United States is reviewing other options for missile defense and has tried unsuccessfully to engage the Kremlin on the issue, he said. "We're serious about cooperation on missile defense with the Russians," he said. "But the sense is the Russians are still nervous and don't trust us."

Russian officials have publicly endorsed the idea of cooperation on missile defense, but have called on Obama to abandon the Polish-Czech plan first and emphasized they want to be included from the ground up, beginning with joint assessment of threats. The two sides have discussed opening a Moscow-based joint data exchange center.

Obama hopes to gain Russian cooperation on other topics, including energy efficiency and climate change. Russia is one of the world's largest energy producers, but it is also a leading emitter of greenhouse gases, behind the United States and China, according to the Center for American Progress.

The summit is expected to produce a deal allowing the United States to ship weapons to Afghanistan through Russia. The two sides may also agree to share intelligence and fight Afghanistan drug trafficking. Officials said the sides are also working to revive a pact on civilian nuclear energy cooperation that the Bush administration suspended after Russia's war last year with Georgia, and to strengthen military ties, also downgraded after the war.

Some business deals, including one involving Boeing, are also expected, analysts said, but they could be overshadowed by disappointment over Putin's decision to withdraw Russia's application for World Trade Organization membership last month.

Obama also is scheduled to deliver a speech in Moscow in which aides say he will try to dispel the feeling in Russia that America's self-interest lies in a weak Russia.

"This is not 1974. This is not just where we go do an arms control agreement with the Soviets, but that we have a multidimensional relationship with the Russian government and with the Russian people," McFaul said.

Russia Reconsiders WTO Accession at National Level; Favors Customs Union Approach Instead

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:15:00 +0000

http://english.people.co m.cn/90001/90777/90853/6688448.html

CIS remains key priority of Russia, says Putin

China's People Daily Online

Xinhua

June 29, 2009

Countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are pivotal political and economic priority of Russia, said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

"Cooperation is profound. We have common transportation and energy networks and speak Russian," Putin was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as telling leaders of political groups in Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The CIS, an alliance of 11 former Soviet Republics, groups Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Turkmenistan. Georgia withdrew from the bloc due to the South Ossetia conflict last year.

Putin also said that entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) remains on Russia's agenda, but "the customs union of Belarus and Kazakhstan has come to the forefront."

Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed on June 9 to start new talks on WTO accession as a single customs union, and thus suspend individual talks.

Russia, which has been seeking WTO membership for more than 15 years, is the largest economy remaining outside the global trade watchdog.

Putin also recalled the recent Yekaterinburg summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

"We will build up cooperation in these formats," he said.

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http://www.unian.net/eng/n ews/news-320697.html

Georgia's parliament formally puts end to CIS membership

Yhiah News Agency

RIA Novosti

June 12, 2009

The parliament of Georgia unanimously passed on Friday decrees on the formal withdrawal of the former Soviet republic from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), RIA Novosti reported.

Georgia notified the CIS executive committee of its desire to quit the Russian-dominated organization on August 18, 2008. The move came after a five-day war with Russia over the Georgian breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

"Georgia has already withdrawn from the organization... Therefore, today we are wrapping up this process by the proper decree formally and legally," parliament Speaker David Bakradze said after the first parliamentary session in two months amid mass opposition protests in Tbilisi.

The CIS currently comprises Russia, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Ukraine is a founding and participating country but technically not a member state. Turkmenistan holds associate status.

Following a CIS foreign ministers` meeting in Kyrgyzstan last October, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Georgia`s withdrawal would change nothing and Tbilisi`s participation in the post-Soviet alliance had been malign in recent years.

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http://www.upi.com/Energy_Resources/2009/06/09/Analysis-Implications-of-Georgia-leaving-CIS/UPI-90981244588248

Analysis: Implications of Georgia leaving C.I.S.

JOHN C.K. DALY

United Press International (UPI).com

June 9, 2009

WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- Georgia hopes to continue its free-trade arrangements with members of the Commonwealth of Independent States after its withdrawal from the organization takes place on Aug. 18. Given the aftereffects of its ill-advised five-day military clash with Russia last August, that may prove to be a forlorn hope, as the confrontation reminded the other Caucasian former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia that Moscow is determined to protect what Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has labeled its "privileged interests" in the former Soviet space.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's determined attempts to bring his country into NATO have increasingly soured relations between Washington, Brussels and Moscow for the last several years, as the Kremlin has repeatedly stated that neither Georgia nor Ukraine should be admitted to the alliance. Heightening Moscow's fears of being outflanked in the Caucasus, from May 21 to June 1 NATO staged its Cooperative Lancer 2009 exercise at Georgia's Vaziani military base, with about 700 soldiers from 13 NATO member nations participating alongside Georgian troops.

The West can hardly feign disinterest, as the crown jewel of Western efforts to bring Caspian oil westwards for export, the $3.6 billion, 1,092-mile, 1 million-barrel-per-day Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, opened in May 2006, carries Azeri crude from Azerbaijan's Caspian offshore Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields to Turkey's deepwater Mediterranean terminus at Ceyhan, crosses 155 miles of Georgian territory and contains two of the line's eight pumping stations.

On June 8 Interfax news agency reported that Georgia's Economic Development Ministry's Department for Foreign Trade Policy head Marina Machavariani told reporters that Georgia hoped that its current free-trade arrangements with C.I.S. member states would remain intact following Georgia's withdrawal from commonwealth. Attempting to soften the prospect of significant damage in its relationships with the C.I.S. after that date, Machavariani observed that there are international regulations allowing use of mechanisms of free movement of goods between Georgia and certain countries, commenting, "To date, Georgia has already signed bilateral free trade agreements with eight C.I.S. countries. With Azerbaijan and Ukraine, which are GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) member states, Georgia also has free economic zone agreements." Machavariani concluded by noting that the GUAM nations account for up to 65 percent of all Georgian exports.

What Machavariani's optimism glosses over is that Ukraine has significant issues with Russia that dwarf its commitments to Georgia. Kiev suffered a brief "gas pipeline" war with Moscow in early January, which forced Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's government into a humiliating climb-down on pricing.

Another prickly issue irritating Russian-Ukrainian relations is the status of Sevastopol, the finest natural harbor on the northern shore of the Black Sea and currently jointly shared by both the Ukrainian navy and Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Last but not least, Yushchenko's government is embroiled in a bitter fight for political survival, with some recent political polls giving Yushchenko a dismal 5 percent approval rating. In sum, the above issues hardly incline Ukraine further to antagonize Russia by broadening its contacts with Georgia following its withdrawal from the C.I.S., an organization in which Ukraine remains a member.

Azerbaijan also has less than perfect relations with Tbilisi, despite being conjoined by the BTC oil umbilical cord. The Russian-Georgian military confrontation inflicted significant fiscal "collateral damage" on Azeri oil exports, as all its westward export routes were closed.

On Aug. 5, 2008, two days before the outbreak of hostilities between Georgia and Russia, there was an as yet unexplained explosion on the BTC segment at Yurtbasi village in eastern Turkey. The cause of the explosion remains unclear, although Ankara initially suspected that it might have been a terrorist attack by the Kurdish separatist Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers' Party. BTC operator BP declared force majeure, and the pipeline only resumed operations on Aug. 25.

Seeking an alternative route, BP switched to the recently reopened 550-mile, 140,000-bpd Western Route Export Pipeline, better known as the Baku-Supsa line, which opened in 1999 and was running at about 90,000 bpd. Because of the worsening military conflict, on Aug. 12 BP announced that it was suspending shipments through Baku-Supsa, as well as the South Caucasus Pipeline, which transports natural gas from Baku to Turkey via Tbilisi. Completing the lock-in of Azeri oil exports, the fighting caused authorities to suspend seaborne shipments from Georgia's Black Sea ports of Batumi (200,000 bpd) and Poti (100,000 bpd), both supplied by rail. Poti was closed Aug. 8 following reported Russian airstrikes. Adding to the grim picture, authorities also ceased exports from Kulevi, Georgia's third Black Sea oil terminus, which opened in 2007 and is capable of shipping 200,000 bpd.

For Azerbaijan the conflict was an unmitigated financial disaster, as the country's oil sector receipts account for almost half of all government revenues, with oil exports generating around 90 percent of total export revenues. Between the BTC explosion and the military clash, Azerbaijan had been blocked from shipping approximately 17 million barrels of crude, while the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that Azerbaijan's final cost for the lost shipments surpassed $1 billion.

Georgia suffered lost revenue from the confrontation as well: In 2007 BTC fees generated $25.4 million in transit revenues, and before hostilities erupted Saakashvili's government had estimated BTC transit payments for 2008 at about $45 million.

For the remaining members of the C.I.S. then, the choices are stark -- continue relations with Georgia after Aug. 18 as before, thereby tacitly approving Tbilisi's confrontational posture vis-a-vis Moscow and risking Russia's wrath, or pay heed to Medvedev's "privileged interests" in the Caucasus. While little is clear in that part of the world, last year's military clash has given former Soviet states significant food for thought about what happens to former Soviet republics that ignore Moscow's concerns and stray too far westwards. Accordingly, it would seem unlikely that C.I.S. nations are likely to follow Saakashvili's lead or conduct "business as usual," unless Tbilisi somehow repairs its unraveled relationship with the Kremlin first.

Vlad's Bad Gas Economically Asphyxiates, Silences and Chills Europeans, But They Continue to Tolerate It!

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:37:00 +0000

Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas is considerable. Countries in Central Europe, such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany and Austria, are extremely dependent on Russian natural gas imports, as is Turkey. Germany receives 43 percent of all the natural gas it consumes from Russia; Turkey receives 66 percent of its natural gas from Russia. At the moment, the Soviet infrastructure links the Russian Tyumen, Timan-Pechora and Ob Basin fields with European consumers, as well as the natural gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

[See: Global Market Brief: Skyrocketing Natural Gas Prices and Europe's Economy, Stratfor.com at: http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/global_market_brief_skyrocketing_natural_gas_prices_and_europes_economy ].

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http://www.moscowtimes.ru/articles/detail.php?ID=373835

Both Sides Lose in the Gas War

January 23, 2009

By Yevgeny Kiselyov

It is too early to tell if the gas wars between Russian and Ukraine have ended for good. Although it would seem at first glance that the conflict was put to rest when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko signed a 10-year gas delivery agreement on Monday in Moscow, it didn't take long for Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's camp to protest the pact.

Yushchenko supporters claim that Tymoshenko didn't have the authority in the first place to negotiate gas prices and sign an agreement with Putin. They accuse Tymoshenko of trading away Ukraine's national interests, including the claim that she supports Gazprom's purported plans for taking ownership of Ukraine's entire gas transport grid. Andrei Kislinsky, the deputy chief of staff in Yushchenko's administration, announced that Tymoshenko and the Kremlin have already created a working group to work out the details of this project. Tymoshenko's main objective in meeting Putin, they assert, was to demonstrate her unconditional loyalty to the Kremlin in exchange for the Kremlin's unconditional support for her in the Ukrainian presidential election in late 2009 or early 2010 (the exact date hasn't been set yet).

It is even possible that on Friday, Ukraine's National Security Council, with Yushchenko as chairman, will declare the gas agreement Tymoshenko signed with Moscow null and void.

It is well known that deliveries of Russian gas were conducted through RosUkrEnergo, a highly controversial intermediary, for the last three years. The company is registered in Switzerland, with a 50 percent stake held by Gazprom and 50 percent owned by private Ukrainian businessmen [!!!] who purportedly profited by manipulating gas supplies and paid big kickbacks to high-ranking officials in Kiev and possibly elsewhere.

RosUkrEnergo has been a major point of contention among feuding political groups for a while; in fact, Tymoshenko made the issue a theme in her 2007 parliamentary election campaign, vowing to eliminate RosUkrEnergo from the transaction. In addition, allegations are occasionally made that Yushchenko has financial ties to RosUkrEnergo.

During the three-week conflict, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller made a statement implying that Yushchenko had lobbied for RosUkrEnergo's interests and initiated the gas conflict with Moscow when he understood that Tymoshenko was serious about liquidating RosUkrEnergo. Now, as a result of Monday's agreement, RosUkrEnergo has been definitively removed as the middleman. It is difficult to imagine that Yushchenko will simply forgive Tymoshenko for her aggressive moves.

It might seem that Russia came out on the losing end of the gas war.

First, Russia lost because it suffered a huge blow to its reputation as a reliable gas supplier to Europe.

Second, Europeans are seriously looking for other suppliers and routes to import gas. For example, an increasing number of German officials are beginning to question if the heretofore celebrated Nord Stream pipeline project, which would pump gas directly from Russia to Germany across the floor of the Baltic Sea, would make Germany too dependent on Russia. [YA THINK??]

The gas war even damaged relations with Russia's traditionally strong European allies such as Serbia, which were without gas for three weeks. Serbs were burning Russian flags, something that just a couple of weeks ago nobody could imagine would ever happen. Even Austria, which has been a loyal buyer of Russian gas since 1968 when it became the first West European country to sign an agreement with Moscow, has started looking for alternative suppliers.

On the other hand, Moscow achieved at least part of what it hoped to accomplish in its conflict with Kiev. Although the Kremlin wasn't able to drive a complete wedge between Ukraine and Europe, the political elite in Kiev, who set their sights high on becoming integrated with Europe politically and economically, suffered a serious blow when Ukraine earned a reputation as an unreliable partner. But Moscow's largest battle gain was destabilizing Ukraine's internal political situation. Kiev's opposing political groups have again locked horns and are bogged down in another serious confrontation.

The Ukrainian media are already discussing the question: Did Moscow offer to support Tymoshenko in her presidential bid? If so, what did she offer the Kremlin in return? Perhaps a rejection of Ukraine's aspiration to join NATO or an extension of the contract for Russia's Black Sea Fleet that is set to expire in 2017?

In reality, these theories should be treated with skepticism. After all, Tymoshenko has no intention of committing political suicide by risking the alienation of the roughly half of Ukraine's voters located in the western part of the country, for whom a pro-Russia policy is absolutely unacceptable. Moreover, she is a quintessential politician -- which is to say an opportunist above all. She might have made various promises to Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, but it would be naive to think that she would necessarily make good on all of them.

As is often the case, the Kremlin does not have a backup plan if things go wrong. What if the majority of European countries take Kiev's side in its ongoing battle with Moscow? What if Yushchenko follows through and annuls the gas agreement Tymoshenko signed with Putin?

Beyond the gas conflict, what if the global economic crisis cripples Russia worse than it ever expected? What if oil prices fall to $10 per barrel in 2009? What if the ruble exchange rate reaches 50 to the dollar? What if Putin's and Medvedev's ratings fall? If any one of these events were to happen, the Kremlin would have a lot more to worry about than Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. In this case, the Kremlin would quickly forget about its obsession to punish Yushchenko for all of his sins, including his 2004 Orange Revolution, NATO aspirations and arms shipments to Georgia in the August war.

Yevgeny Kiselyov hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio and is chief editor of TVi, a new television channel in Ukraine.

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ime-eB29lh2E2m_LwNapeBBPHMBAD95QLUP81

Russia, Ukraine sign gas deal, end standoff

By Nataliya Vasilyeva, with contributions from Yuras Karmanau and Maria Danilova in Kiev, Ukraine.

AP

January 19, 2009

MOSCOW -Russia and Ukraine signed a deal Monday that restores natural gas shipments to Ukraine and paves the way for an end to the nearly two-week cutoff of most Russian gas to a freezing Europe.

The agreement was signed by the heads of Russia's state-run natural gas monopoly Gazprom and the Ukraine's gas company Naftogaz. The signing was witnessed by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko.

Putin said Gazprom had received orders to resume shipments bound for Europe, which had been cut since Jan. 7 as Moscow and Kiev argued over 2009 gas prices and allegations that Ukraine was stealing gas destined for Europe.

Ukraine disputed this, claiming that Russia was not sending enough "technical gas" to push the rest further west.

Officials say the restored gas shipments could take up to 36 hours to cross Ukraine and reach European customers.

Europe gets about 20 percent of its total gas needs from Russia via Ukrainian pipelines, and the cutoff hit hard at some countries, such as Bulgaria and Slovakia, that rely almost entirely on Russia for gas.

The confrontation has deeply shaken Europeans' trust in both Russia and Ukraine as reliable energy suppliers, as more than 15 nations have been forced to scramble for alternative sources of energy. The dispute was further complicated by geopolitical struggles over Ukraine's future and over lucrative export routes for the energy riches of the former Soviet Union.

Tymoshenko and Putin negotiated a preliminary deal for Ukraine to get gas with a 20 percent discount from this year's average European price, which Russia says is $450 per 1,000 cubic meters. That would double the price Ukraine paid in 2008.

However, natural gas prices for Europe are expected to fall sharply later this year, due to the fall in oil prices. By midsummer, Ukraine could be paying as little as $150 for 1,000 cubic meters, said Ronald Smith, a strategist at Moscow's Alfa Bank.

Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn said Monday, citing Naftogaz and Russian officials, that the average price Ukraine will pay this year will be around $240 to $250. He did not elaborate.

Russia won a key principle, however, that Ukraine must pay more for its energy supplies. Russia also won't have to pay higher transit prices to Ukraine to use its pipelines.

Putin said in 2010, Ukraine will have to pay full price for Russian gas, and Russia will pay market prices for transit.

In the long term, it is not clear how Ukraine will pay for the huge amount of Russian gas needed to run its outdated factories and heating systems.

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych said any gas price higher than $250 would be mean a "collapse" of the economy, which is already coping with a collapse of the national currency, a drastic fall in exports and a shaken banking sector.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7832481.stm
Germany could hold key to gas deal

BBC New

January 16, 2009

As Germany prepares to welcome Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the BBC's Berlin correspondent Steven Rosenberg considers how Germany could broker a deal to end the energy dispute between Russia and Ukraine.

Of all the countries in the European Union, it is Germany which has the best relations with Russia. And which, perhaps, is best placed to help negotiate an end to the gas crisis.

The two countries are major trading partners. They are even building a pipeline together - North Stream - which will bring Russian gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine.

Moscow claims this route will ensure there are no further interruptions to Europe's energy supplies.

Vladimir Putin is best friends with the German chairman of the pipeline consortium - former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

What is more, Mr Putin speaks fluent German from his days as a KGB spy based in Dresden. (Angela Merkel speaks fluent Russian - so no language barrier there.)

But as the energy dispute between Moscow and Kiev drags on, the Germans are growing increasingly frustrated with the Russians.

Prior to Mr Putin's visit to Berlin, Chancellor Merkel warned the Kremlin its credibility as an energy supplier was on the line. She promised to pass that message on personally to Mr Putin during his visit to Germany.

Embarrassed and annoyed by the images of Europeans shivering without Russian gas, the Germans have been threatening to diversify their energy sources.

"Within the European Union, the subject of energy security is now very important," Guenter Gloser, Germany's minister for Europe, said.

"We need to be independent of those supplying our energy - so we need more energy efficiency, we need more renewable energies like solar projects and we need a range of energy partners - not just Russia."

That is easy to say - and it has been said many times before, not only by Germany, but by other EU countries.

History repeating itself

The last time Russia turned off the gas taps to Ukraine in 2006, causing temporary gas shortages further west, European leaders vowed that never again would they allow energy disputes to the east to leave Europe freezing.

The phrase "energy security" became the rallying cry of the EU.

There were calls to boost solar energy, wind power, and make plans to import liquid gas by sea. Anything to ensure that Europe would not be too dependant on the Russians and get caught out twice.

But three years on, it has happened all over the again.

Another dispute between Russia and Ukraine - and once again Europe is freezing. The EU is facing accusations it was too complacent and too divided over European energy policy.

"The usefulness of a crisis is that it forces you to look into the mirror," chief correspondent of Die Welt newspaper Michael Stuermer said.

"That didn't happen. This present crisis could be seen on the radar over the last three months. The signals were coming all the time. I don't think the German government or the EU Commission took note of the seriousness. We didn't learn much from the crisis of 2006."

Micahel Stuermer believes the latest row could nudge the EU to come up with a "coherent energy strategy".

Considering that the European Union currently gets a quarter of its gas from Russia, it is difficult to imagine such a strategy excluding Russia.

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http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/world/BO101369/

Gas-starved EU nations seek end to energy crisis

Associated Press

January 14, 2009

MOSCOW -- The leaders of several gas-starved European nations traveled to Ukraine and Russia on Wednesday, pressing them to restore supplies as the EU threatened both with legal action for halting energy deliveries in the midst of winter.

But Ukraine's natural gas company said for a second straight day it would not send Russian gas along to Europe. It claimed that Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom was trying to force it to cut service to parts of Ukraine in order to send the gas along.

For his part, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of holding European nations hostage and insisted the EU should not accept Ukraine's claims. He spoke as met with the prime ministers of Slovakia, Bulgaria and Moldova at his residence outside Moscow.

[ACTUALLY, WE WOULD ARGUE THAT THE NARROW-MINDED 'GREENIES' OF EUROPE ARE THE ONES HOLDING THE CITIZENS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION ENVIRONMENTAL HOSTAGES, GIVEN THE GREENIES' PREFERENCE FOR NATURAL GAS].

"No matter what papers others provide, I'll burn them in the oven," he told the visitors. "We opened the tap, and are ready to supply gas, but on the other side, the tap is closed.

"Nobody, no transit country, has the right to use its transit location to take other customers hostage," Putin declared.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said "Ukraine is losing the trust of European partners because of its behavior."

"The most unpleasant part is that millions of Europeans feel like hostages and are truly suffering," added Bulgaria's Sergei Stanishev.

With no end to the politically charged dispute in sight -- despite a weekend agreement that sent teams of EU monitors out to pumping stations to keep tabs on the gas flows -- the EU was fed up.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso warned Gazprom and Naftogaz, Ukraine's state-run gas company, that he will urge European energy companies to sue them unless they move quickly to restore gas supplies.

"If the agreement is not honored, it means that Russia and Ukraine can no longer be considered reliable partners for the European Union in matters of energy supply," Barroso told the European Parliament.

[WE ALWAYS KNEW THAT BARROSO WAS AN 'EINSTEIN'].

Gazprom stopped sending gas into Ukraine's pipeline system on Jan. 7, alleging that Ukraine was siphoning off supplies destined for Europe. Ukraine has denied the charges, claiming that Russia has not sent enough so-called "technical gas" to pump the rest of the gas west to Europe.

Gazprom cut off all gas supplies to Ukraine itself on Jan. 1, amid a clash over what price Ukraine should pay for gas in 2009.

The dispute has affected millions of people, mostly in eastern Europe and sent at least 15 European nations scrambling for heat. Thousands of businesses have had to shut down or cut production, forcing workers into involuntary layoffs.

Russia opened a tap to Ukraine on Tuesday after the hard-won EU deal to monitor gas flows, raising hopes across Europe.

But Ukraine's gas company Naftogaz did not deliver the gas to Europe, saying Gazprom demanded that it use a technically arduous route which would force Ukraine to halt supplies to a large swath of its own territory. Ukraine uses Russian gas, but also produces natural gas on its own and has large stockpiles of the fuel.

Naftogaz head Oleh Dubina said Gazprom made the same request again Wednesday -- and he would not agree to halt supplies to Ukrainian consumers.

"Unfortunately, we answered the same way: we cannot leave our regions without gas," Dubina told reporters.

Gazprom has rejected the claim, saying the route was fine.

Earlier in Kiev, Fico urged Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to hold talks with Putin to resolve the dispute as soon as possible.

"We ask for talks between the prime ministers of Russia and Ukraine. This is an issue that is very important for us," Fico said.

Russia and Ukraine are deeply at odds over what Ukraine will pay for Russian gas in 2009. Ukraine last year paid $179.50 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas and its president said Tuesday that Ukraine will pay no more than $210 in 2009.

Russia wants Ukraine to pay market price for gas, about the $450 that European customers pay.

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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1009/42/373535.htm

Gas Woes Threaten Economies [and damage relations that Russia has with certain countries”]

By Gordana Filipovic

Moscow Times

14 January 2009

-- A weeklong cut in gas supplies has prompted concern that some Balkan countries already hit by the world financial crisis could see dimmer economic prospects and lower job numbers as a result.

Supplies to Europe have been cut off for almost a week in freezing temperatures after Russia turned off the tap to Ukraine in a long-running feud. Even though a deal was reached Monday, the second in two days, gas supplies still failed to restart on Tuesday.

The Balkans took Europe's biggest hit, with hundreds of thousands of households initially losing heat and dozens of businesses forced to halt production.

Analysts said it was premature to assess the impact on growth, but lower industrial output for the month of January was possible. The midterm outlook depends on global economic conditions and the impact of falling global demand.

"Given lower demand, many firms have piled stocks in the last few months, and I don't think demand or sales will suffer," said Raiffeisenbank analyst Zdeslav Santic in Zagreb.

"But some producers, like those of construction materials, may be forced to reduce or stop production, which would lead to job losses," he said.

The economic impact could become more visible if the latest deal in restoring gas supplies hits a snag, especially for countries with little or no reserve, said Vladimir Gligorov of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. "Croatia has had its own reserves to rely on at the time of crisis, Bulgaria may not have sufficient gas reserves, but they've got the European Union to turn to for assistance and Serbia has no reserves and no one to turn to," Gligorov said.

With politicians focusing on restoring heat to households, some factories reliant on natural gas have halted production. After a few days, Hungary and Germany agreed to sell some gas to EU-hopeful Serbia, where drugs company Hemofarm, owned by Germany's Stada, and fertilizer manufacturer Azotara suspended production.

The gas disruption has hurt the backbone of Bulgaria's industry, where steelmakers, chemical and fertilizer producers as well as food processors use natural gas. The national employers' organization has estimated daily losses at 500 million levs ($367 million), but direct losses were lower, at around 13 million levs a day, Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov said.

Neighboring Macedonia's main steel exporter halted work.

In Croatia, steel mills, sugar plants, chemical industry and construction material producers have been the most exposed as they rely on gas, the Croatian Chamber of Commerce said.

Incidentally, the gas outage even caused Sarajevo's eternal flame -- a monument to victims of World War II -- to go out last week.

The flame came on again when Hungary started shipping gas to Bosnia.

But a major impact on the Balkans' economic growth is seen as unlikely.

"The gas crisis is likely to have a modest measurable impact on growth in the first quarter, and the impact will be more sizable if the shutoff continues beyond this week," said Richard Segal, a UBA Capital analyst based in London.

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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1137645

Rhetoric versus reality. Russian threats to European energy supply

By Andreas Goldthau

Energy Policy (36), 2008

As more than 50 per cent of overall European imports originate from Russia, fears have been expressed that the Kremlin could use energy resources as a foreign policy tool. A thorough assessment of domestic consumption, production and investment volumes however reveals that Russian supply will have difficulties in matching growing domestic and European demand. Hence, as the author argues, the threat to European gas supply does not lie in geopolitics, but rather in a lack of investment in the Russian upstream sector.

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http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/eur070315mc

Europe's dwindling gas reserves

by Wendy Braanker

Radio Netherlands Worldwide

[Netherlands does not import any Russian gas. Not yet. According to the President of the board of Dutch company Gasunie, Marcel Kramer, if it does happen, it will be an extremely small amount. The Netherlands has enough gas reserves for around 30 years in its gas fields near Slochteren in the north of the country.]

15-03-2007

Gas will eventually run out in Europe, not this year, not next year but soon. Delegates to a European gas conference currently being held in Amsterdam have concluded that the only way to solve the gas problem is for Europe to strengthen ties with countries such as Russia and Iran. However, not everybody is happy with that conclusion.

Europe depends on Russia for a quarter of its gas imports. Delegates to the Amsterdam gas conference, called Flame, concluded that the demand for gas will only increase, while European gas reserves are dwindling.

In an address to Flame, Professor Jonathan Stern from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies said:

"The amount of gas extracted from within Europe will start to diminish around 2015. And that will cause problems... we will have to increase our imports from other countries."

Strengthen ties

European Union countries have to compete with the United States and Asian countries for gas supplies and the demand for gas has sharply risen throughout Asia and in the US. Solar and wind energy can meet some of Europe's energy needs but more time is needed if alternative energy is going to be a substitute for gas.

Professor Stern says the lack of alternative energy sources necessitates stronger European ties with Russia and energy producing countries in the Middle-East, and he comments: "It's irrelevant if we agree or disagree with the Russians, the Iranians or another possible gas exporters".

The professor of energy studies says Europe needs to stop telling other governments how to run their countries:"

That's the reason why dialogue between Europe and those countries is so problematic."

Power politics

In other words: European politicians and companies have to stop trying to force their way of doing things on gas exporting countries. Because of the increased profits generated by gas exports, these countries have increased their political power. And it is precisely the political power wielded by Russian President Vladimir Putin which is causing concern among European politicians and companies.

There is criticism from another corner as well. This week, Italian human rights activists - they are not the first - called on Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi not to forget human rights in his trade discussions with Russian President Putin. However, energy is sure to play an important role in the talks between Mr Prodi and his Russian counterpart. Italy's energy giant En is on the point of signing a contract with Russia's state energy company Gazprom.

Soothing words

Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, was also at the Flame conference in Amsterdam and it tried to persuade Flame delegates that the Russian state-owned company is a trustworthy partner. [REALLY???] Sergei Korovin, Gazaprom's vice-president of international affairs and head of international projects, says as the world's largest gas producer and exporter, Gazprom will continue to operate in a responsible manner on the national and international gas market. Soothing words from Gazprom, probably aimed at calming fears that many companies have about investing in Russia ever since Gazprom forced Shell Oil to halve its share in a large-scale gas project on the Sachalin peninsular in December 2006. Shell was financially compensated for giving up 50 percent of its stake in the project [EXPROPRIATION OF FOREIGN ASSETS] but oil and gas companies want to build up their own reserves in order to guarantee a secure future. Money is not as important.

However, not dealing with Russia is not an option according to dozens of speakers at the Flame conference. Europe needs Russian gas. There are no alternatives.

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http://cleantechlawandbusiness.com/cleanbeta/index.php/629/europes-worsening-energy-crunch/

Europe’s Worsening Energy Crunch

Clean Beta

July 25, 2008

The European Union produced 9% less energy in 2006 than it did in 1997. Meanwhile, consumption rose by 7% and net imports rose by 29%. In 1997, the energy dependence rate stood at 45%. A decade later, it stands at 54%, according to the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

In 2006, the EU imported 2.4% of its total energy supply (1,010 million tons-of-oil-equivalent, or TOE) than the previous year. Oil and gas accounted for about 60% and 26% respectively of all imports. Russia was the primary supplier of crude oil and natural gas were Russia (33% of oil imports and 40% of gas imports in 2006).

Despite reduced energy consumption in 2006, energy production fell 2.3%, which drove up net imports by 2.4% in 2006 and the energy dependence rate to 54% from 53% in 2005.

Finland consumed roughly 10% more energy in 2006 than the preceding year. For the five largest energy consumers, which accounted for nearly two thirds of total consumption in the EU, consumption moved +0.5% in Germany, -1.2% in France, -1.6% in the United Kingdom, -0.6% in Italy and -0.5% in Spain.

Europe has actually gotten more dependent on energy imports in the past few years, especially in Cyprus, Malta, Luxembourg and Ireland. The countries with the least dependency on energy imports were: Poland (20%), the United Kingdom (20%), the Czech Republic (28%) and Romania (29%). More importantly, Denmark has achieved the unthinkable and become a net exporter of energy.

The lion’s share of Europe’s energy imports are oil and gas, which accounted for 60% and 26% respectively of net imports last year. Russia was the largest supplier of crude oil and natural gas, providing nearly a third of oil imports and more than a third of natural gas imports in 2006.

Although Russia's Economy is in Better Shape than in 1998, It May Still Adversely Impact Global Financial Markets

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:48:00 +0000

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/why-russias-woes-should-worry-you.aspx

Why Russia's Woes Should Worry You

As financial markets and governments worldwide hope for a brighter year, one big country's troubles threaten to send the global economy tumbling into a deeper hole.

By Jim Jubak

MSN Money

1/6/09

Is there some wild card out there that could make the global economic mess even worse?

For months now, my attention has focused on Russia. The country is big enough, and its problems serious enough, that it could take the global crisis to a new level of danger.

The good news is that Russia is in much better shape than it was the last time it shuddered into crisis, in 1998. The bad news is that Russia's current problems bear an eerie resemblance to those that took the country into default, led to the fall of a once-popular political leader and forced the U.S. Federal Reserve to organize a bailout in order to prevent a panic in the global financial markets.

Let me quickly summarize the last crisis:

In 1998, a worldwide financial crisis that started in Asia led to a collapse in demand for oil, natural gas and nonferrous metals, which formed the foundation of the Russian economy.
The prices of oil and other commodities plunged, which left banks that had made huge loans to oil or mining companies (or to investors who had pledged shares of those companies as collateral) teetering on the edge of insolvency.
Despite government efforts to defend the ruble, the Russian currency went into free fall.
The Russian stock, bond and currency markets collapsed when domestic and overseas investors delivered a devastating "no confidence" vote by refusing to buy ruble-denominated bonds despite yields of more than 200%. Russian stocks lost 75% of their value from January to August.
With inflation running at better than 80% and food prices up 100%, Russians took to the streets in protests that eventually brought down the government of Boris Yeltsin.
Russia then defaulted on its ruble and dollar debts, leading to the failure of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund after losses of $4.6 billion in less than four months. To prevent a panic in the financial markets, the Federal Reserve stepped in to organize a bailout of the fund.

So here we are in 2009, and a worldwide financial crisis has led to a collapse in demand for the oil, natural gas and nonferrous metals that still form the basis of the Russian economy. Share prices on Russian stock markets have headed south with a vengeance. Shares of Gazprom (OGZPY, news, msgs), the leader of Russia's oil and gas industry, dropped more than 70% in 2008.

On Sept. 16, the government suspended trading on Russia's stock exchanges for an hour after the worst one-day fall since -- you guessed it -- 1998. Despite words from the finance minister assuring investors that there was no systemic crisis, trading had to be suspended again Sept. 17 and 18. The Russian stock market fell 19% on Oct. 6 and an additional 14% on Oct. 9.

Banks that had made huge loans with shares of energy and mining companies as collateral teetered on the brink of insolvency, as they had in 1998. However, in the 1998 crisis, the Russian government lacked the financial resources to act. As 2009 begins, the country's coffers are full after a decade of climbing energy prices. Russia's reserves stood at $600 billion in August, so the government has been able to move aggressively.

In September, the government lent the country's three biggest banks $44 billion. That same month, the government injected $20 billion into the financial markets and then lent an additional $110 billion to the country's banks. October brought $36 billion more in loans to banks.

To head off runs on those and smaller banks, the government raised the limit for deposit insurance to $25,000. As in the U.S. crisis, even after an injection of liquidity from the government, Russia's banks refused to lend to each other. Interest rates on interbank loans climbed to 23%. Nine banks had failed by the end of November. The government allowed others to keep operating, even though they were insolvent.

War on 3 fronts

But keeping the domestic banking system from insolvency is only one front in the war. At the start of the crisis, Russian companies owed $450 billion to overseas investors. With the Russian stock market falling and the ruble down 20% since August, many of those overseas investors have demanded their money back. The government has authorized state loans of $50 billion to make up for overseas loans that come due and where overseas investors refuse to roll them over. That's clearly a stopgap measure, however.

And let's not forget the ruble. On Dec. 29, the Russian currency traded at 41.6 rubles to the euro: That's the lowest value ever for the ruble against the euro. Against the U.S. dollar, the Russian currency is doing better: At 29.3 rubles to the dollar, the ruble is cheaper against the dollar than it's been since 2005. But the ruble was down almost 40% in 2008 against its official dual currency basket of 45% euros and 55% dollars.

The big worry is that Russia won't have enough in the bank to win a war being fought on these three fronts. Reserves that stood at $600 billion in August were down to $450 billion as of Dec. 19. Spending to control the economic, financial and currency crisis is accelerating. In the week that ended Dec. 19, for example, the central bank spent $7 billion to buy rubles to slow the currency's decline. Reflecting those fears, Standard & Poor's has downgraded the country's long-term sovereign credit rating to negative from stable.

And it looks like spending on social programs is just starting to climb. Failing companies have stopped paying wages. Inflation -- the government hopes for inflation of just 13% in 2009 -- eats away at already meager payments to pensioners. A falling ruble makes anything imported more expensive. Efforts to end domestic subsidies for energy eat into already strained family budgets. The last time around, the government threw money into pensions, subsidies and pay packages to keep protests down to acceptable levels. I don't think it will be different this time.

The good news

Ending Russia's crisis doesn't require a 180-degree turn in the economy, the Russian stock market or the ruble. What's important is the pace of the fall. If the ruble declines in a slow and measured fashion, if the economy looks like it's headed for a recession instead of a deep plunge into panic, and if stocks fall slowly enough that the stock market can stay open, the crisis will be manageable. And Russia will remain one of a very large group of countries coping with a global economic and financial crisis rather than becoming a wild card with problems big enough to threaten the global economy.

Because the speed of the decline is critical, the first quarter of 2009 poses the greatest risk. If the crisis in Russian financial markets, Russian banks and the ruble turns into a rout in the first quarter, then Russia's problems are on the way to becoming the world's problems. Watch the ruble: Some currency experts think there's a chance it could fall 20% to 30% in the first quarter of this year. That would constitute a rout.

I don't think that will happen. Russia's reserves, though not infinite, remain hefty. The country may not be making as much at energy and mining as it did when oil was $147 a barrel, but the country continues to run a trade surplus that adds to reserves. And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went into this crisis with a far stronger grip on power than Yeltsin had in 1998.

Underinvestment likely to cost

However, even if Russia dodges a bullet, its crisis could have a huge effect on the global economy -- especially on the global energy economy.

Gazprom and Rosneft (RNGZY, news, msgs), Russia's other national energy champion, have underinvested in energy production during the boom years for oil and natural gas. At the beginning of the boom, young fields produced huge amounts of oil and natural gas with relatively small investments. But now many of these fields are aging and need billions of investment dollars to keep production from falling. Gazprom's budget for capital investment is set at $32 billion, which is about five times the company's capital budget in 2004.

It's hard to see how Gazprom and Rosneft, which has its own portfolio of capital projects, will be able to fully fund their ambitious production and pipeline expansion plans if Russia continues to divert billions to stabilizing its banks, supporting its currency, propping up its stock market and increasing social spending to head off a rising tide of protest.

Looking at the silver lining

Before the global financial crisis, projections from organizations such as the International Energy Agency suggested that current underinvestment in energy production would lead to a supply crisis in the next five to 10 years. The global economic slump, which has decreased demand for oil and natural gas, has put off that crisis by at least two years.

But by creating more competition for limited supplies of global capital, by raising the cost of capital, by pricing out some sources of energy and by making it harder for some companies and countries to raise all the capital they need, the current slump all but ensures that the supply crisis, when it finally comes, will be more painful than projected earlier.

And that's the best-case scenario now playing out in Russia.

Potentially UNdemocratic Changes to Russia's Constitution Portray Putative Putin Puppet Presidency as Problematic

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:01:00 +0000

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200812230925.htm

Russia Remains Stable Under Medvedev-Putin Rule

Xinhua News Agency

December 23, 2008

MOSCOW (Xinhua): Russia underwent a smooth transfer of power in 2008, with former President Vladimir Putin stepping down and his handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev taking over.

The new system of power seemed to function well during the past several months in spite of the Caucasus crisis, NATO's eastward expansion and the global financial crisis. The new head of state has continued the policies of his predecessor, whose eight-year presidency was characterized by a booming economy and political stability at home.

MEDVEDEV-PUTIN TANDEM

Medvedev, the former first deputy prime minister, was sworn in as Russia's new president in May, succeeding his long-time mentor two months after an overwhelming victory in the country's presidential election.

At Medvedev's inauguration ceremony, Putin called on the entire nation to support the new president and firmly advance along the path of national development.

Meanwhile, Medvedev repeatedly pledged adherence to Putin's policies, which have "set up strong foundations for long-term development, for decades of free and stable development."

Medvedev subsequently appointed Putin prime minister and sent him into power in the quickest way.

So far, Medvedev and Putin have worked in tandem under the constitution. In a swift adjustment to his new role, Medvedev has held talks with European partners, paid a visit to Latin America, and dispatched troops to Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia. He is seen as a housekeeper worth his salt and loyal to his predecessor as well.

When Putin decides to come back to the presidency, Medvedev will return the keys to him without hesitation, analysts said.

In his first state-of-the-nation address on Nov. 5, Medvedev proposed extending the presidential and parliamentary terms from four years to six and five respectively. The bill, passed by both houses of the parliament within weeks, was described by Putin as reasonable during a later televised question-and-answer session.

While Medvedev said the extension of the presidential term enables more effective implementation of reforms, it was seen by some analysts as an attempt to pave the way for Putin's return to the Kremlin.

However, in response to a question as to how he felt being prime minister, Putin said he was happy, dismissing speculation that he was planning a quick return to the presidency.

Putin, widely regarded as one who enjoys being a back-seat driver, added that his power tandem with Medvedev was very effective.

But Putin did not rule out the possibility of a second presidential term, telling reporters he would think about it and make a decision by 2012.

Once he decides to do so, Putin would be looking at up to 12 years in power, long enough to carry out his plans.

PLANS TO REFORM

During the past half year at the Kremlin, Medvedev spared no efforts on addressing the urgent need to eliminate corruption, promote the rule of law, and diversify the economy beyond the oil and gas industries.

The president last month delivered a passionate commitment to liberal values in his annual state-of-the-nation address, which was described by Putin adviser Sergei Karaganov as "the most liberal presidential speech in the Russian history."

Speaking before the Federal Assembly in the white-columned Grand Kremlin Palace, Medvedev criticized the government for ineffectiveness and called for efforts to bolster democracy.

Ten proposed reforms to the parliamentary election procedure were then listed by the president, a former law professor.

First, smaller parties that may garner five to seven percent of the votes in parliamentary elections will be granted one or two seats in the State Duma.

In the second measure, Medvedev proposed that the power to nominate regional governors be given to majority parties in regional parliaments instead of the president. The initiative would offer the United Russia party a far stronger foothold because it controls most of the regional legislative assemblies.

He also proposed a gradual decrease in the number of signatures needed for parties to take part in elections, the cancellation of electoral fees, and even a reduction in the minimum number of members an organization must have in order to be registered as a party.

Analysts believe that the idea of the constitutional amendments, which represents a logical step in the country's political system reform, could be traced back to the Putin administration.

This package of measures began to be developed a long time ago when Putin was president, said Dmitry Badovsky, a deputy director of the Social Systems Institute.

Throughout the address, Medvedev also underlined the necessity of curbing "legal nihilism" and protecting small businesses from unnecessary red tape.

If Medvedev succeeds in these nuts-and-bolts reforms, Russia is certain to gain streamlined politics and become a more efficient and richer country, analysts say. [??]

PERIOD OF STABILITY

It is widely believed that Russia has entered a period of political stability because of the Putin-led United Russia party's victory in last December's parliamentary election.

Now that the pro-Kremlin party holds two-thirds of the seats in the State Duma, authorities are able to push forward policies almost without obstacles. The party's influence was proved when constitutional changes were rushed through both houses of the parliament in November.

The 2-million-member party, founded in December 2001, is a steadfast supporter of Putin, to whom the party owes the large support it has gained.

Analysts said Putin's leadership of the party is closely connected with Russia's political reform process, as the post gave him a power base in the parliament.

At United Russia's 10th congress last month, Putin spoke highly of the party's contribution to the continuity and stability of the Russian administration.

In the face of the spreading world financial crisis, he told hundreds of fellow members that the party's grip on power depends on its ability to protect Russia from danger.

The party leader also reassured Russians concerning the international economic turmoil, vowing the use of all means within the government's reach to prevent a repeat of the economic shocks in the 1990s.

On the international stage, western threats to isolate Russia as punishment for a brief military conflict with Georgia failed to be fruitful.

Furthermore, NATO foreign ministers earlier decided to delay Ukraine and Georgia's admission to the Membership Action Plan, a key step for entry into the military alliance.

Putin was even confident enough to say that the new U.S. administration might be thinking twice about plans to deploy a missile shield in central Europe. The proposed shield has drawn sharp criticism from Russia.

The fairly stable domestic and international scenario is undoubtedly favorable to Russia's progress toward set targets and its course of resurgence as a world major power.

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http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/5187-russia-putins-cards-still-hidden

Russia: Putin's Cards Still Hidden

It's easy to write Dimitri Medvedev off as a puppet in the hands of his predecessor as Russian president – but the reality is far more complicated

Joshua Tucker

The Journal Online.co.uk

Tuesday 09 December 2008

At the conclusion of Russia’s recent electoral cycle, as expected Vladimir Putin’s hand-chosen successor, Dmitri Medvedev, was overwhelmingly elected president of the Russian Federation. Somewhat more surprisingly, Putin chose to head the Russian government, technically under Medvedev, as the country’s prime minister. Since that time, Russia watchers have been fascinated with trying to understand this arrangement.

Under both Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president had clearly been the most powerful figure in Russia. Indeed, the Russian constitution grants a very large degree of formal powers to the Russian president, so much so that political scientists refer to Russia as a “super-presidential” system of government.

With Putin moving into the prime minister’s office, however, the importance of this formal arrangement immediately came into question. We can imagine that this has led to one of three possible scenarios.

First—the general consensus of the international media—one could imagine that Medvedev was little more than Putin’s puppet, with ultimate authority still resting firmly on the shoulders of Putin. Proponents of this view note that Medvedev has spent most of his adult life working for Putin and that he had little or no independent power basis of his own, including, crucially, no background in the Russian security services—a marked contrast with Putin's long service in the KGB. It is important to note, however, that adopting this view requires us to suspend the belief that formal powers matter in Russia – or, at the very least, to assume that informal networks and power are more important than formal ones.

A second argument holds that formal institutions do matter in Russia, and that eventually political power will indeed flow to the holder of the Russian presidency. We can imagine two different variations of this scenario: one in which Putin is aware of the fact that power will flow to Medvedev, and one in which he is not. If it is the latter case, then we can imagine that eventually Russia is going to enter a period of heightened instability, as crucial actors begin to defect from Putin to Medvedev. It is potentially more interesting, however, to consider the former scenario: that Putin might willingly have taken on the role of prime minister even if he knew this would eventually result in real power flowing to Medvedev.

Why could this possibly be the case? One explanation might be that Putin himself desired to step down from the presidency—perhaps to enjoy a lifestyle more akin to his former diplomatic partners Gerhard Schroeder and Tony Blair—but found himself unable to do so. We can see some potential evidence of this from the repeated trial balloons that were sent out prior to the recent election cycle about various post-presidency roles for Putin, as well as in the infighting that broke out among various factions of the Russian security service around that time. Besides, had Putin wished to continue serving as president, it is very likely that he could have done so. While the Russian constitution does contain a clause limiting presidents to no more than two consecutive terms in office, there is little doubt that Putin could have amended the constitution to allow himself additional terms in office had he so desired.

Prior to 5 November, we had no idea which of these three states existed in Russia. All three would have seen a high degree of cooperation between Putin and Medvedev, which is exactly what we witnessed in the first months of the Medvedev presidency. While the tendency has been to interpret this as a sign that Medvedev is little more than Putin’s puppet, it is also consistent with a view of Putin providing a “buffer” for his protégé as Medvedev settled into the role of the president and built up his own sources of support.

On 5 November, however, Medvedev announced that he would pursue a constitutional amendment to extend all future terms of the Russian president to six years. The legislation necessary to enact this amendment is working its way through the political system, but its eventual passage is all but assured. While we can not know for sure why Medvedev chose to introduce this amendment, one possibility that can not be dismissed is that Putin is preparing an imminent return to the Russian presidency, which can be accomplished by an early Medvedev resignation. Russian law prohibits the president from serving more than two consecutive terms, but once the constitutional amendment has gone through, this would mean that Putin could return for 12 more years as president.

Why now? Again, only Medvedev knows definitively, but the most likely culprit is the Russian economy, which is currently being battered by the global economic crisis and the now rapidly declining price of oil. In many ways, the Putin era has been defined by a tacit trade-off between a Kremlin that has accumulated more and more political power—to the point where Freedom House no longer considers Russia a democracy—in return for delivering economic stability and prosperity. Despite Russia’s vaunted hard currency reserves and impressive stabilization funds, the amount of foreign debt that has been accumulated by Russian corporations—including what are largely state owned or state dominated corporations—has left Russia more susceptible than expected to the international credit crisis. Additionally, Russian exports and government revenue are both highly dependent on oil prices, which are now plunging to a previously unimaginable $40 a barrel.

If the grand bargain of the Putin era is beginning to unravel, then it would not be all that surprising that the Kremlin authorities would like to avoid another presidential election for the foreseeable future. The fact that the constitutional amendment will extend the presidential term starting with the next term suggests that the only way to take advantage of the new six-year term immediately is to have Medvedev resign, with Putin being his likely successor. If this does come to pass, it probably shows that Putin has come to realize that trying to run the country from the position of the prime minister—especially during an economic downturn—is not viable in the long term. If Medvedev does not resign, however, this will remain an open question.

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http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/12/03/putin-medvedev-putin_middle_east_taking_note/1374/

Putin-Medvedev-Putin: Middle East Taking Note

By ARIEL COHEN

Middle East Times

December 3, 2008

Dynastic rulers and dictators in the Middle East stood amazed and impressed as the upper house of the Russian parliament passed constitutional amendments on Nov. 26, paving the way for Vladimir Putin to return to supreme power in the Kremlin – or for Medvedev to hold supreme power for Putin for the next 16 years.

No family succession here, like in Jordan, Morocco, Syria, or - in the future, possibly - in Egypt. No messy, opaque Islamic politics, like in Iran.

The Russian example for the Middle East is ominous: observe the outward constitutional trappings of a power transition while deliberately destroying the democratic essence.

The Russian model of "sovereign democracy" – to use Marxist-Leninist language, "in form but not in content" – seriously challenges the American model promoted during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

The United States has insisted that an open society, multi-party democracy and the rule of law, with free press, is a sine qua non of modernization. Russia (and China) beg to differ, providing an alternative model for the Middle East.

The rulers in Moscow and Beijing feel more secure when other countries follow their authoritarian market models, and fall in line, supporting anti-American geopolitics.

President Dmitry Medvedev's announcement (Medvedev and the Constitution) two weeks ago that he may change the Russian Constitution to extend the presidential term for six years indicates that the process was orchestrated well in advance.

With the legislature and the national media firmly in the Kremlin's hands, it is little wonder that the proposal gained immediate approval in the nation's parliament and regional legislatures. If this happens, the Putin-Medvedev tandem would control the country for up to 24 years: Two terms of four years (2000-2007); a Medvedev interregnum under the Putin control (2008-2012), and potentially two six-year terms (2012-2024).

It didn't have to be that way. The Russian Constitution proclaims a presidential republic in a multi-party system, with president as a "guarantor" of the Constitution.

However, checks and balances in Russia were underdeveloped after the collapse of communism in 1991, and non-existent before that. Moreover, since 2000, Russia further suffered from a serious deterioration of those political institutions, such as the Duma and the Supreme Court, which had a potential to balance the executive branch of power.

Furthermore, the mass media has increasingly come under the state's thumb, with the government now effectively controlling all TV channels and most of the central newspapers.

Governors and senators are effectively appointed by the executive branch. Political parties were defanged and brought under the Kremlin's control, with the current 7 percent electoral barrier ensuring that since 2003 only the parties given a green light by the Kremlin get elected to the Duma.

Like in the Middle East, the economic crisis is buffeting Russia particularly hard. Being an energy and commodity exporter may be fun when global prosperity is in full blossom, but it really hurts when the world markets are tanking. And Russia is a high-cost oil producer. It is competitive when oil is above $75. It is sputtering when its Urals brand oil is below $50.

Many political analysts in Russia agree that the current rulers will not consider a peaceful power transition through election. If the Russian leaders are closing the door on the country's peaceful political change, which may be necessary due to the economic crisis, they may be planting the seeds of widespread popular discontent, if not a revolution.

Internal politics always matter in foreign policy. Political developments in Moscow may make it difficult for the U.S. Barack Obama administration to deal with Russians on ballistic missile defense, the race for the Arctic, and other issues, as I suggested in two separate articles: Europe Anti-Missile Defense System: Standing Up to Russia's Threats and Executive Summary: The New Cold War: Reviving the U.S. Presence in the Arctic.

Most importantly, the newly announced Obama administration's foreign policy team will need to make serious choices in relations with such Middle Eastern heavyweights as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and others, who may prefer a "sovereign democracy" to an open society.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is senior research fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security at the Catherine and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

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http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13305848

Duma Amends Constitution, Paves Way for Medvedev-Putin Reforms

By Lyudmila Alexandrova

By Itar-Tass World Service

24.11.2008

The introduction of amendments to Russia’s Constitution – the first ever since its adoption in 1993 – heralded the beginning of President Dmitry Medvedev-proposed political reform. Experts believe, though, that it was drafted back during Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

The State Duma on Friday approved in the final, third reading Dmitry Medvedev’s amendments to the Constitution extending the tenure of office of the head of state and of the legislators from four years to six and five respectively. The Cabinet of Ministers will have to present annual accounts of its performance to parliament.

As he addressed the Federal Assembly with a state-of-the-nation address on November 5, Medvedev, among other things, said the terms of office of the head of state and of the State Duma members should be extended by two years and one year respectively. So far, the Russians have elected the president and the legislators each four years.

The president pointed out that the proposed changes were not a reform, but fine-tuning of the Constitution, and “any reformist zeal in relation to the Fundamental Law is utterly out of place.”

“We are accustomed to thinking in broader terms,” the president said, as he explained the need for amending the duration of the presidency and of the lawmakers’ powers. He acknowledged that he gave thought to this first time several years ago.

At the next polls the president will be elected for six years, and the State Duma, for five. The presidential election in Russia is due in 2011, and the parliamentary ones, in 2012.

The new rules will be applicable only to the next election cycle in Russia, and not today’s president or the State Duma. At the same time the current prime minister will have to present his account to parliament. Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov speculated that Vladimir Putin would address the legislators to brief them on the Cabinet’s work as early as February.

While the bills obliging the Cabinet to report to the State Duma were approved unanimously and without much debate, the law extending the tenures of office sparked a heated discussion. The Communists came out against the idea as such. In the end all of the 57 Communist deputies voted against. The votes in support of the amendments totaled 392, and there were no abstentions.

The amendments will now be submitted for consideration to the Federation Council, which is to give it a go-ahead by a three-quarters majority. The outcome of the voting arouses no doubts.

In the message to the Federal Assembly Medvedev insisted that the point at issue is not a constitutional reform, but an adjustment of the Constitution, some very important, but not fundamental amendments, which by no means alter the political or legal nature of the existing institutions.

Putin supported the president, saying that the proposed amendments were devoid of what he described as “personal dimension”, and would certainly contribute to democratic processes in the country.

In the meantime, sociologists have found out that the Russian people by and large have nothing against the amendments to the Constitution and agree with the extension of the presidential and parliamentary terms.

As an opinion poll by the national public opinion studies center VCIOM on November 15-16 found, of those polled in 140 cities and villages of Russia’s 42 constituent territories more than 56 percent support Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a longer term of the president and the Federal Assembly, 29 percent opposed the idea, and 15 made no comment.

Two-thirds of Russians (67 percent) believe that amendments to the Constitution are permissible in principle.

According to analysts, tighter control of the parliament and government would somehow counter-balance in the public space the extension of the presidential term.

Also, Medvedev in his message declared a reform of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament. From now on the FC will be formed “only of persons elected to the representative bodies of power and of members of local self-government bodies of the corresponding territory of the federation.”

This solves a two-fold problem. The Federation Council has always been criticized for being a house of parliament uniting members of the executive authorities, which is a violation of the principle of power sharing. The second problem is a political one. The Federation Council has been a real safe haven for retired politicians and civil servants, which bred corruption and harmed the general level of competence of the upper house. Against this background the need for the residence qualification is no longer necessary, and it will be canceled.

One more important initiative concerns the exclusive right of parties that have gained a majority in the regional legislatures to approach the president with proposals for appointing this or that candidate as the region’s governor.

This gives United Russia a far stronger foothold, for it controls most of the regional legislative assemblies, and it reduces the role of presidential representatives.

Smaller parties that may collect five to seven percent of the votes in the parliamentary elections will be granted one or two seats in the State Duma. As a matter of fact, this is a step towards reducing the qualification hurdle, although Medvedev said the question is not on the agenda yet.

Dmitry Badovsky, a deputy director of the Social Systems Institute, believes that the constitutional amendments are “a logical step that continues the reform of the political system.”

“It would be wrong to say that this package of measures is tailored for Putin,” Politkom.ru quotes him as saying.

This package of measures began to be cooked a long while ago, it was discussed back when Putin was president himself, says the political scientist.

“In this case we have before us clear continuity and an evolution of the political system laid down during the Putin presidencies,” he said.

The very instance of amendments to the Constitution is an extremely important political event, says political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya. It is worth recalling that throughout his first seven years in office - from 2000 through 2007 – Putin invariably and firmly refrained from amending the Constitution. He argued the fundamental law should stay as it is. However, a year ago, interviewed by G8 correspondents, Putin for the first time said he had changed his opinion. Apparently, it was then that the decision concerning the current amendments was made, Stanovaya said.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russpower14-2008nov14,0,447484.story

In Russia's Putin-Medvedev Shuffle, Putin is the Lead Dancer

Although Vladimir Putin has left the presidency and become prime minister, there's no longer any question that he's more powerful than his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.

By Megan K. Stack

LA Times

November 14, 2008

Reporting from Moscow — The question has all but disappeared from Russian discourse after months of feverish debate: Who is in charge, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev?

It's been nearly a year since Putin, faced with the end of his presidency, endorsed his long-loyal underling to succeed him in the Kremlin. The speculation that once rattled around the capital after Putin restyled himself as prime minister -- whether the two men would clash, whether Medvedev would try to eclipse his onetime mentor -- has fallen away.

These days, there is a broad perception that Putin remains the dominant politician. Analysts variously describe Medvedev as a spokesman, a yes man or, more generously, a just-slightly junior partner in Russia's vertical rule.

This is all gleaned from political body language, of course. Few can say with any certainty who gives the orders behind closed doors, and many Russians now argue that it's an irrelevant question. In public, the two leaders operate in almost flawless tandem, as two complementary arms of the power structure built by Putin.

In the last few weeks, as Medvedev pushed parliament to prolong the presidential term and doled out steely threats to counter American plans for missile defense, he appeared even more Putinesque than Putin himself -- more hostile toward America, more enthusiastic about alliances with anti-American governments in Venezuela and Cuba, and less concerned with the niceties of constitutional preservation.

‘Medvedev has made himself even more harsh,’ said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. ‘He's following the logic of Russian power. He has to look macho and demonstrate his muscle, especially having Putin in the background, continuing to call the shots.’

It was Medvedev who, during his state of the nation speech last week, unveiled plans to change the constitution. Explaining that parliament and the Kremlin need ‘enough time’ to "maintain a high level of authority" and carry out complicated development plans, he proposed lengthening the presidential term from four years to six, and service in the ruling-party-dominated parliament from four years to five. He also suggested giving parliament more power to oversee the government.

These are not fresh ideas. The proposed changes are a resurrection of a plan that was championed in the twilight of Putin's presidency by some of his most ardent supporters, who pushed him to amend the constitution to stay in the Kremlin longer.

At the time, Putin demurred. The constitution was sacrosanct, he insisted, and should not be altered. Now it is Medvedev who is pushing the changes -- and Putin who's staying in the background, while telling reporters he supports the amendments.

Some in Moscow speculate that the two men are laying the groundwork for Putin's extended return to the Kremlin; Medvedev has made it plain that the lengthier term would not apply to his own presidency.

Others argue that it doesn't matter which of the two men occupies the presidency.

‘I don't think the investigation into who's the leader in this duet is relevant,’ said Garry Kasparov, former chess champion and leading opposition figure. ‘The core message is both for a Russian audience and for the West. They're saying: ‘We are staying. Forget about it -- we'll decide between us who's in charge.’’

The proposed changes carry undeniable gravitas, marking the first time the post-Soviet Russian Constitution has been amended since its adoption in 1993. But the amendments are racing through the usually laborious legislature: The first reading is scheduled to be heard this week in the State Duma, the lower house.

The changes are expected to meet little resistance in parliament, which is stacked with Putin loyalists. Still, some eyebrows have been raised even among his supporters.

Sergei Markov, a lawmaker in the ruling United Russia party, said criticism of the amendments as vehicles to harden Putin and Medvedev's hold on power was ‘partly true, because really it's an increase in power.’

‘It's a change in the constitution with unclear, uncertain purposes,’ he said. ‘I think eight years is enough for any president to change the country. It's all tactical, and that's my major point of criticism. I think to change the constitution for some small, tactical things, it's not too reasonable.’

Markov said Medvedev's eagerness to change the constitution was rooted in uncertainty over shifting global dynamics, especially Russian wariness of America in the wake of Russia's war with U.S.-backed Georgia. By ruling longer, he said, Medvedev hopes to create greater stability.

Medvedev has already signaled that he's ready to play tough with Washington, threatening to deploy short-range Iskander missiles in the far-western-Russia enclave of Kaliningrad in response to U.S. deployment of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. He also has blamed the United States for the global financial crisis.

‘These are initiatives of tandem rule, and the continuation of Putin's paradigm of rule,’ Shevtsova said. ‘This is a ruling corporation, and within this corporation they can change hats.’

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http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/600/42/372287.htm

Constitutional Changes Go to Duma

By Francesca Mereu

Moscow Times

12 November 2008

President Dmitry Medvedev submitted legislation to the State Duma on Tuesday to extend presidential terms from four to six years, the Kremlin said, making good on a state-of-the-nation promise to become the first leader to change the Constitution.

The legislation, which will also extend term limits for State Duma deputies from four to five years, is expected to sail through the Kremlin-controlled Duma, although not likely by the Constitution Day holiday on Dec. 12.

As president, Vladimir Putin faced pressure to amend the Constitution to stay in office beyond eight years. But he refrained from touching the 1993 document, apparently in part to avoid being lumped together by the West with strongmen such as Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Nursultan Nazerbayev of Kazakhstan, who changed their countries' constitutions to extend their reigns.

Medvedev, in announcing the constitutional amendments last Wednesday, said he wanted to extend the presidential term to enable the government to implement reforms more effectively. The extension would not apply to the current term, Kremlin aides say.

The halls of government have been filled with speculation over whether the change is an attempt to return Prime Minister Putin to the Kremlin for two, six-year terms or to give Medvedev an extended second term.

"We don't understand anything about what is going on," said a Cabinet official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "We don't know whether the move is intended to smooth the way for [Putin] to come back to the Kremlin or for some other reason.

"We live in a country where anything is possible. The decision will be made in secret and at the last moment," he said, adding that sometimes government officials only learn that they have been appointed to new posts from the media.

The official likened the current uncertainty to the atmosphere in the months before Putin abruptly named Medvedev as his preferred successor last December. In the run-up to that announcement, rumors ran fierce that Putin might bow to enormous pressure to amend the Constitution.

Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin, a Communist, said he expected the constitutional amendments to clear the chamber within two months. After that, it will need to be approved by the Federation Council and then by two-thirds of the regional parliaments.

Ilyukhin said Medvedev should be focusing on the financial crisis, not amending the Constitution.

"The country is now facing a serious crisis and Medvedev is changing the Constitution," Ilyukhin said.

He also accused Medvedev of using the crisis to his own ends, noting that Putin had used the Beslan school attack in 2004 as a reason to end the popular election of governors.

Medvedev has worked in tangent with Putin since assuming office in May, and political analysts said the two must have agreed on the constitutional changes.

"Everything was ready a long time ago," said Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with the Indem think tank.

Stanislav Belkovsky, head of the National Strategy Institute, said he did not believe that Medvedev would not leave early for Putin. "Putin had the chance to stay on, but he didn't use it," Belkovsky said.

National media reports have suggested that Medvedev might step down as early as next year, perhaps on the pretext of the need for a new election under a new Constitution, clearing the way for Putin to return.

The Cabinet official said he also doubted that Medvedev would use the constitutional amendments as a pretext to leave before the end of his term. But he added that he had heard rumors since Putin's first day as prime minister that he was already tired of being the prime minister.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed talk that Putin might become president again as media speculation and said Putin was happy in his position as prime minister.

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http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/372281.htm

Preparing for Putin's Return to the Kremlin

By Nikolai Petroy

Moscow Times

11 November 2008

President Dmitry Medvedev's first -- and perhaps last -- state-of-the-nation speech on Wednesday did not adequately address the problems facing the country's troubled economy. It was clear from his speech that the Kremlin does not realize the seriousness of the situation and lacks a plan for dealing with the financial crisis. There could be another explanation for this omission as well: the authorities are preoccupied with something they personally find much more important -- planning out a change in leadership.

The address to the nation included a mix of vague appeals to "further perfect" the political system and democratic institutions. But when the president offered specific proposals, they were either meaningless or openly anti-democratic. For example, Medvedev said that political parties that collected 5 percent to 7 percent of the vote for State Duma seats be given limited -- I would say "decorative" -- representation in the chamber. It is interesting to note, however, that not a single party would have met this criterion in the Duma elections in December.

Russia's governmental system is essentially a lifeless body, and Medvedev's democratic "innovations" are nothing more than a cosmetic veneer on a political corpse. To make a bad situation even worse, the president made two very concrete suggestions: to extend the term for the president from four years to six and to increase the term for Duma deputies from four years to five. The reasons behind the increase in the presidential term are probably tied to a plan to return Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to the president's post before Medvedev's term expires in 2012, or else to pull off a presidential castling move that would place Putin back in the Kremlin. The reason behind the increase in Duma terms might stem from the deputies' desire to safeguard their posts against the deepening crisis with the help of early elections.

Medvedev also proposed changing the way the Federation Council is formed, which is probably intended to strengthen support from the regional elite.

Another proposed innovation is to give the party that received the most votes in regional elections -- read United Russia -- the exclusive right to recommend to the president its candidate for the presidential envoy in the seven federal districts. This suggestion is still a bit fuzzy, though -- in part, because it is unclear if it refers to just one party in each region, and how authorities would account for votes received in single-mandate districts. Until now, no strict procedure has been followed in selecting nominees for the presidential envoy post, and in some cases, the officials formally charged with putting forward the candidates first learned of some appointments from the president himself.

Despite this uncertainty, it is clear from this and other points in Medvedev's address that the president intends to increase United Russia's dominance by increasing its control over both the regional elite and the government. It is possible that if a plan for holding early elections and returning Putin to the presidency is in the works, it will be carried out not through the Kremlin, but through United Russia -- which Putin heads. That would explain a number of recent staffing changes within United Russia and rumors that Vladislav Surkov, Medvedev's first deputy chief of staff, is planning to join the party ranks. At least some of these questions will be cleared up when United Russia meets for its national convention in two weeks.

Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JK08Ag01.html

The Other Historic Event

By Andreas Umland

Asia Times online - SPEAKING FREELY

November 8, 2008

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say.

As the world watched how Americans elected their first black president, Barack Obama, it has been largely ignored that across the ocean another historic event was taking place simultaneously in Moscow.

On November 5, Dmitry Medvedev gave his first presidential address to the Federal Assembly, the two houses of the Russian parliament. In his speech, Medvedev presented to Russian lawmakers an action plan which, if implemented, could usher in a return to the policy of democratic reforms started by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s and continued by Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.

To be sure, Medvedev's speech was by no means a praise of the West and its values. Rather, the Russian president started with an array of verbal attacks on the US and gave vent to the rabid anti-Americanism that has become a major axiom of foreign political thinking of both the common people and elites of Russia.

Medvedev reasserted that Russia's recent activities in the Caucasus - intervention in Georgia - were justified, and that the US is to be blamed for this and other international conflicts - an idea that he, moreover, repeated again when concluding his speech. Medvedev also announced that Russia may place short-range rockets in the Kaliningrad region as a response to the installation of US anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic.

However, in the middle of his long speech, Medvedev also voiced a sharp critique of historical Russian statism, and did not hesitate to hail the adoption of the Russian constitution under Yeltsin, in 1993. He proposed that "Russian democracy should develop further". In its first analyses of Medvedev’s speech, the Western media tended to emphasize a couple of technical innovations proposed by the president for the country's political system, such as the prolongation of the terms of the president (to six years) and the State Duma (the Lower House).

What was, however, more significant in Medvedev's presentation was the outspokenness with which he condemned the Russian state apparatus's interference in elections, mass media, civil society and the economy - all of which gives, in Medvedev's opinion, birth to corruption in the bureaucracy.

In view of the many deficiencies of the post-Soviet political system, the president announced a number of practical changes which, if implemented in full scale, could signal the start of a new transformation of the nature of politics in Russia.

Under president Vladimir Putin, the various official and unofficial alterations of Russia's political system amounted to a centralization and insulation of power in the Kremlin, which by 2007 had led to the restoration of authoritarianism and a de facto one-party system.

In contrast, Medvedev made it clear that he wants to return power to the people and to see politics becoming more pluralistic. Thus, Medvedev proposed that smaller parties should have a voice in the political process, suggesting that those parties falling below a 7% threshold in parliamentary elections yet reaching more than 5% should in the future be represented with at least one or two deputies in the Duma. (One suspects that this peculiar modification of the electoral system is a result of a somewhat awkward compromise between Medvedev, who apparently wants to make the composition of the legislature more diverse, and conservative forces in the government who seek to preserve the high 7% threshold. The latter was introduced only recently to secure the nearly total control of the lawmaking process by Putin’s United Russia Party.)

Medvedev also proposed that only elected deputies should become governors of Russia's regions or members of the Federation Council, the Upper House. He made further suggestions to reduce the hurdles for parties to register and take part in elections. Medvedev wants to extend the prerogatives of the national parliament and local legislatures in relation to the executive, as well as to include non-governmental organizations in the legislative process.

By proposing these changes, he apparently is looking for channels to bring supporters of democratic changes into the legislative process. It is also noteworthy that Medvedev spoke out in favor of a "strengthening of the national mechanism of the application of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms" - the major document of the Council of Europe. By doing so, Medvedev affirmed Russia’s acceptance of basic European standards and his intention to preserve Russia's membership in some major Western organizations.

However, the most remarkable statements were made by Medvedev concerning Russian journalism, the tight control of which by the state is, perhaps, the most consequential pathology of Russia's current political system. It is remarkable that the president not only acknowledged openly this fact, but even showed some resignation concerning the firmness of the government's grip on the mass media.

Medvedev proposed his own way to solve this problem: "Freedom of speech should be secured by technological innovation. Experience shows that it is practically useless to try to persuade bureaucrats to leave the mass media alone. One should not try to persuade, but extend as broadly as possible the space for the Internet and digital television. No bureaucrat can prevent discussions on the Internet or censor thousands of TV channels at the same time."

While Medvedev's assessments and proposals are sometimes pathetic, they nevertheless show that he thinks about the political system in much the same way as many Russian political scientists and Western politicians. Obviously, Medvedev will face enormous obstacles in implementing his vision for a democratic Russia. Still, in formulating its policies towards Moscow, the West should take due notice that the formally most powerful politician in Russia can be counted on as a firm supporter of democratic values.

Dr Andreas Umland teaches at The Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt in Bavaria, is editor of the book series Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (www.ibidem-verlag.de/spps.html), and administers the website Russian Nationalism.

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http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2008/11/oleg_kozlovsky_first_amendment.htm

First Amendment, Russian Edition

By Oleg Kozlovsky, Coordinator of Oborona youth movement

Robert Amsterdam: Perspectives on global politics and business blog

On 5th November the world’s attention was drawn to American presidential elections and the victory of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Russian authorities used this day to declare an unprecedented reform in the country’s recent history—changes to the Constitution. Dmitry Medvedev in an annual address to the houses of the Parliament suggested that the presidential term should be increased from 4 years to 6 years and the Duma’s term—to 5 years.

There is no doubt that Medvedev’s “suggestion” will be regarded as an order by members of Parliament. They have already responded to his speech and expressed readiness to vote for any Kremlin’s amendments to the Constitution. A referendum on this issue is not required, so adopting the new legislation will be easy and quick. Some deputies have even said that Medvedev’s current term may be prolonged till 2014 instead of 2012 (and Duma’s till 2012 instead of 2011). Later and rarer elections will somewhat ease the Kremlin’s fear of an “electoral revolution”—its worst nightmare since the uprising at Kyiv Maidan.

The changes, if passed, will become the first amendment to the Russian Constitution since it was adopted on a referendum 15 years ago. Medvedev’s predecessor, Vladimir Putin, has always been repeating that the Constitution doesn’t need any changes. He preferred to simply ignore it: when he abolished elections of regional governors, submitted the Parliament to himself, technically introduced censorship and political repression, violated independence of courts and property rights. But some things still couldn’t be changed without amending the Constitution, like the length of president’s term or the two-term limit. As usual with KGB, Putin didn’t do the dirty part of the work himself, he used Medvedev instead.

Ironically, the first changes to the Constitution were suggested by the person elected to his office at the staged and fraudulent elections that lacked even minimal legitimacy. Then they are to be approved by the undemocratically elected Duma lacking any real opposition and then by the Council of Federation whose members haven’t been elected at all. To add to this picture of cynicism, this is done while praising the Constitution and its standards democracy at a pompous celebration of its jubilee planned for 12th December.

The plans to change the Constiution were immediately condemned by the opposition and don’t seem to be popular among regular people. The emerging united democratic movement Solidarity called Medvedev’s actions illegitimate and antidemocratic. The Other Russia coalition plans to hold a Dissenters’ March in December that will demand that the Constitution remains untouched. People who discuss the issue on the Internet and in the street also criticize the changes. The government, however, prefers to ignore the public opinion.

As the opposition candidate in the USA receives congratulations on winning presidential elections, Russian ruling elite shows once again that it’s not going to pass power to anybody else. Comparison of Russia’s first amendment to the Constitution to the American First Amendment perfectly symbolizes that development of democracy here has gone terribly wrong.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/no-laughing-matter-cartoons-and-the-kremlin-818063.html

No Laughing Matter: Cartoons and the Kremlin

The UK Independent

April 30, 2008

With his easily recognisable features, his omnipresence in every area of Russian politics and foreign policy, and his penchant for withering, snappy one-liners, Vladimir Putin is a cartoonist's dream. At the beginning of his eight-year reign, he was launching a bloody war in Chechnya and promising to "waste" terrorists; as it draws to a close he is denying rumours of secret plans to marry a 24-year-old gymnast, and telling journalists to keep their "snotty noses and erotic fantasies" out of his private life. There's plenty of material for even the most unimaginative cartoonist to have a field day.

There's only one problem for Russian cartoonists, however – they're not allowed to draw him. Mikhail Zlatkovsky is perhaps the most famous cartoonist in Russia, with his sketches appearing daily in Novye Izvestia newspaper and a history of political cartoons and existential artwork dating back to the 1970s. He was the first Russian cartoonist to draw Mikhail Gorbachev, and actively caricatured Boris Yeltsin. He has also drawn Stalin, although the cartoon that he did as a teenager in 1959 took until 1988 to be published.

When Yeltsin named Mr Putin as acting president on New Year's Eve 1999, Zlatkovsky drew the ailing Yeltsin dredging a mermaid-tailed Putin out of the sea and putting a crown on his head. Putin became a regular feature of Zlatkovsky's cartoons. But the new President was officially inaugurated on 7 May 2000, and the next day, Zlatkovsky's editor at Literaturnaya Gazeta, where he then worked, came into the newsroom, fresh from a Kremlin reception.

"He said to me, 'Misha, we're not going to draw Putin any more,'" recalls Zlatkovsky. "The young lad is very sensitive." From that day onwards, Zlatkovsky has not had another cartoon of Mr Putin published. Nowadays, the only cartoons of the Russian leader to appear in the Russian press are those that depict him in a positive, or even heroic light.

As Mr Putin's rule went on, says Zlatkovsky, the number of taboo subjects increased – ministers, Kremlin aides, Chechnya and top military brass all became off limits. Recently a cartoon depicting Alexy II, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, propmpted a phone call from the patriarchate and a strong request never to draw him again.

"There's no central censor these days," says Zlatkovsky. "Instead, we have the censorship of the fire safety inspectorate; or the censorship of the tax police." Satirise the ruling class today, and tomorrow the newspaper offices will be paid a surprise visit by fire inspectors who will find a bureaucratic regulation that the office does not meet, and close it. Or there will be a call from the printworks stating that the price of paper has inexplicably risen tenfold. Many cartoonists have given up, finding other work, and newspaper editors prefer to err on the side of caution and not publish cartoons at all.

Zlatkovsky is taking part in a series of Cartoonists for Peace exhibitions to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He has worked as an artist and cartoonist since 1971, but during the Soviet period he would never have dared to draw cartoons depicting party leaders. The cartoons that appeared in the press praised socialist development, or railed against the imperialist West. Perhaps the only cartoonist at the time who was bold enough to subvert the system was Vyacheslav Sysoyev – his cartoons were published in the West, and he was arrested in 1983 and jailed for "distributing pornography".

Then came perestroika, and one day in 1987 Zlatkovsky got a call summoning him to APN, a Soviet news agency. He was met by three young men – probably KGB agents – who told him that they urgently needed cartoons featuring Mikhail Gorbachev

.
"They told me that Mikhail Sergeyevich [Gorbachev] travels abroad all the time, trying to show off the new, human face of socialism," recalls Zlatkovsky. "But at a conference in Paris, a journalist had asked him how there could possibly be democracy in the Soviet Union if there were no cartoons poking fun at the leader.

"They told me I should come the next day with a cartoon of Gorbachev, and offered me very good money by the standards of those times. But they made it clear that I shouldn't draw anything too offensive or cutting."

Zlatkovsky duly complied, drawing a cartoon that satirised Gorbachev's political battle of wills with the top brass of the Soviet army. A suited Mr Gorbachev, with a hammer-and-sickle birthmark on his forehead, tries hard to toss a giant bear in military uniform over his shoulder.

The agency was pleased, but when Zlatkovsky asked where the cartoon would be published, the commissioners looked at him in disbelief: "It's not going to be published anywhere in the Soviet Union!" they exclaimed. "We'll just distribute it in the West to show that we have real democracy."

As Mr Gorbachev's perestroika gathered force, the sham freedom of expression became more and more real, and then came the Yeltsin era. Western reminiscences of the Yeltsin period as halcyon days of media freedom and democracy often gloss over the many flaws of the time. In fact, local and national media were widely used to serve business and oligarchic interests, and the media agreed to play by Kremlin rules to get Yeltsin reelected in 1996 and ward off the Communist threat. Nevertheless, there is no denying that the opportunity for satire and humour was far greater during the 1990s.

"Satirists ought to build a monument to Yeltsin," says Zlatkovsky. "Of course there was a lot wrong with those times, but in comparison to what we have now it was a golden age."

Many newspapers employed cartoonists to poke fun at the government, mocking Yeltsin's drinking and ailing health. Television also got in on the act. NTV's Kukly, a Russian version of Spitting Image, was merciless in its mocking of the ageing Russian president and his dubious entourage, and drew enormous viewing figures.

When Mr Putin was made prime minister, and then acting president, a puppet of the neophyte politician soon appeared and became one of the stars of the show.

In one Putin sketch, he is portrayed as a young king on his wedding day, marrying a woman called Federation (the Russian Federation). Egged on by cronies and advisers, he takes Russia into his bedroom but finds himself impotent and does not know what to do with his bride. In another sketch, Mr Putin is portrayed as a malevolent baby who is put under a spell by a fairy-like Boris Berezovsky, who was then seen as the kingmaker in Russian politics.

Like Zlatkovsky's Putin cartoons, there was not much future for Kukly. Shortly after Mr Putin was inaugurated in May 2000, the channel got calls from the Kremlin requiring that the Putin puppet be removed from the show. The show was eventually axed. Comparing its biting satire and merciless mocking of top political figures with the bland variety shows and sitcoms that pass for comedy on Russian television today, it's hard to believe they are products of the same country.

Yuly Gusman, a satirist and head of the Russian Film Academy, agrees. "Yeltsin can be reproached for many things," he told Radio Liberty. "But he attached great value to freedom of speech and of the press which attacked him and bit him. He ground his teeth but bore it all."

Gusman presented a film award ceremony in Moscow earlier this year, and made a light-hearted joke to the audience that nobody knew who the real president was these days. A spoof film of Mr Putin as a tsar with Mr Medvedev as his son was also shown. But during the televised coverage of the ceremony, all of this was cut.

For now, the internet remains a place where Russians can laugh at their leaders, and blogs and websites are full of Putin jokes. In one joke currently doing the rounds, Mr Putin calls an aide to his office and says that as he is standing down, arrangements need to be made for every eventuality. He sends his advisers to Israel and instructs them to arrange for him to be buried next to Jesus, whatever the cost. After painful negotiations with all the parties involved, the aide returns and says that the plans are sorted but it will cost $10bn. "Ten billion dollars?!" asks Putin incredulously. "For three days?!"

But many fear that as Mr Putin prepares to leave the Kremlin next week, even the internet is coming further under governmental control. Purposefully vague "anti-extremist" laws have been used against websites critical of authorities. Last week, the internet site of a local paper was closed after users wrote derogatory remarks about local authorities on the paper's blog.

"The authorities fear satire and mockery more than anything else," says Zlatkovsky. "Nothing dents their aura of greatness like satire."

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http://thesop.org/index.php?article=10818

Making Fun of Medvedev Favorite Russian Pastime

By Claire Bigg, Radio Free Europe

April 21st, 2008

Russia swears in its new president, Dmitry Medvedev, in just under three weeks. But while he won the voters' ballots in a landslide victory last month, Medvedev has yet to win their respect.

His March 2 election-- which critics say was merely a prearranged transfer of power -- has prompted a flurry of jokes about the future president.

Most revolve around his boyish appearance, diminutive stature, and reputation as a puppet of President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to become prime minister after stepping down in May.

What is "nanotechnology" in Russian politics? goes one joke. Answer: When each new leader is shorter than his predecessor.

In another, Putin takes Medvedev out for dinner. Putin orders a steak. "What about the vegetable?" the waiter asks him. "The vegetable will have a steak, too," answers Putin.

Perhaps the most popular gag so far is a video that lampoons the cult Soviet film "Kavkazskaya Plennitsa," or "Caucasus Prisoner." The clip has been viewed more than 1 million times on the video-sharing website YouTube.

In the original scene, a local tricks a naive Russian tourist into kidnapping a young woman by persuading him that abductions are a local tradition. In the overdubbed spoof version, the tourist is Medvedev and he's being asked to snatch not the woman but the Russian presidency.

"So what's my role?" asks Medvedev. "Collect signatures, put forward your candidacy," the local tells him. "My candidacy?! That's also part of the tradition? Brilliant!" exclaims an enthusiastic Medvedev.

The local then explains that things must look "natural" even if the vote is bogus. "The candidates will resist, kick, even bite, call for observers, shout that they're going to complain to the United Nations," he says. "But don't pay attention -- it's all part of a beautiful old tradition!"

No Laughing Matter

The Kremlin, if aware of the clip, is unlikely to be amused.

Such jokes are a far cry from the reverent portrayal of Medvedev and Putin in Russia's state-controlled media.

Yuly Gusman, humorist and head of the Russian Film Academy, says the Kremlin has become particularly intolerant of political satire under Putin's tenure.

"It's disappearing from the social sphere and from television debates. It's gone, and I think it will be gone for a long time. I think this began under Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]," he says.

"[Former President Boris] Yeltsin can be reproached for many things, but he attached great value to freedom of speech and of the press, which attacked him, bit him. He ground his teeth but bore it all."

Gusman knows this from firsthand experience.

The television station covering the Nika film awards ceremony -- Russia's equivalent of the Oscars -- in Moscow last month cut out part of his speech, in which he made a tongue-in-cheek remark about the Putin-Medvedev power tandem.

"Traditionally we have a message from the Russian president," he told the star-studded audience. "Since clearly no one knows who our president is, you can consider it coming from me."

A spoof film sequence shown to Nika guests in which Putin and Medvedev were portrayed as a tsar and his son was also skipped over in the television report.

'Approved Humor'

The Kremlin, however, has tolerated -- sometimes even encouraged -- mild political satire.

As Russians cast their ballots on March 2, national television broadcast images of Medvedev attending KVN, a hugely popular student humor show dating back to Soviet times. Medvedev was shown smiling good-naturedly as some of the performers poked gentle fun at his sudden rise to power.

Yuly Gusman (right) says, "Yeltsin can be reproached for many things, but he attached great value to freedom of speech and of the press" (AFP)"It's meant to show that we supposedly have democrats in our country, freedom of speech, not like under Comrade Stalin," says Gusman. "It's approved humor; it's very pleasant, but that's all."

The more scalding satire that flourished in the 1990s following the Soviet collapse has all but vanished. "Kukly," a satirical puppet show, was one of the first television programs axed after Putin became president in 2000.

"Kukly" showed Putin in a variety of guises, from an indecisive leader struggling to choose a new prime minister to an impotent young king on his wedding night.

One of the most caustic episodes was based on "Little Zaches Called Zinnober," a tale by 19th-century German author E.T.A. Hoffmann in which a wicked dwarf bewitches a city, tricking its residents into worshiping him as a great ruler.

The show depicted Putin as the wicked, foul-mouthed dwarf, and oligarch Boris Berezovsky -- the former Kremlin kingmaker who eventually fell out with Putin -- as the magic fairy helping him put the nation under his spell.

"In the outhouse, waste them all! Waste everyone in the outhouse!" screams the Putin puppet at the start of the episode, in which he is still a baby in his crib -- a reference to Putin's famous statement about Chechen separatist rebels.

"Lie still, boy. Now we'll make a human being out of you," says the Berezovsky-fairy.

Vanishing Nation?

The episode enraged Putin's supporters, a handful of whom published an open letter calling for the show's authors to be prosecuted.

The man behind "Kukly," the well-known humorist Viktor Shenderovich, was not dragged to court. But he left the show in 2001 after the television station broadcasting it was taken over by a state-controlled company. [GAZPROM] A significantly tamer version of "Kukly," without the Putin puppet, was finally ditched in 2003.

Since then, says Shenderovich, political satire has been driven underground.

"It's not the 'Kukly' program that disappeared, it's the country in which the 'Kukly' program existed that disappeared," he says. "Beyond the realm of the Internet, we've returned to a Soviet model. Biting personal satire, the kind that goes for the most sensitive spots, is absolutely impossible in the federal framework. It escaped entirely to the Internet; it escaped entirely to folklore."

Russia has a rich tradition of political satire. For centuries, sharp-tongued "chastushki" -- short, rhymed folk songs -- were devised to ridicule the country's rulers.

Russians also used "lubki," hand-colored folk prints, to poke fun at the elite. Peter the Great, whose drive to secularize and Europeanize the country earned him many foes, was a favorite target of lubok artists. Famous lubki portray him as a cat or a crocodile.

While biting satire has long been an inherent part of political life in Western countries, Russia's history of despotic regimes means this type of humor has almost always been confined to the private realm.

Precisely because it is so deeply entrenched in the Russian psyche, the Kremlin is unlikely to ever succeed in uprooting political satire.

"In Russia, mocking authorities is an exclusively oral, folkloric tradition," says Shenderovich. "There were jokes about Stalin under Stalin's rule; there have always been jokes about leaders, there have always been harsh chastushki, there has always been an entire world of satire -- including satire that is foul-mouthed, popular, vulgar, but incredibly talented. This has always existed, and will always exist."

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/778078.stm

Kremlin Pulls Strings on TV Puppets

BBC News

Monday, 5 June, 2000

Political aides to Russian president Vladimir Putin are increasingly irritated by the portrayal of the president on commercial NTV's satirical puppet show "Kukly".

In recent weeks, Putin aides warned NTV to avoid using the puppet representing the president.

The pressure suggests that Mr Putin is less tolerant of ridicule than his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who tolerated "Kukly" for years after an initial unsuccessful attempt to shut the programme down.

"Kukly", which is similar to Britain's "Spitting Image" programme, has repeatedly presented Mr Putin as weak and indecisive.

Unflattering images

In recent weeks Mr Putin's puppet has appeared in a variety of satirical guises. He was portrayed as:

an impotent young king on his wedding night

an indecisive leader trying to select a new PM

a new king choosing his coronation outfit

an ignorant censor of literary works

Such negative portrayal can be damaging, as "Kukly" is one of the most popular TV shows, with 40% of Moscow viewers tuning in.

The Russian media has linked the Kremlin's growing exasperation with the Media-Most group - which includes the NTV channel - to a raid on the group's Moscow offices last month.

In the raid, dozens of armed and flak-jacketed men in balaclavas descended on its Moscow offices saying they were looking for documents.

Kremlin not amused

The steady onslaught of satire has prompted Kremlin pressure on NTV to tone down the show, on top of criminal and bankruptcy proceedings against its parent company.

"People from the Kremlin made transparent hints to us," producer Vasily Grigoryev said. "They told us to be more balanced and to try not to cause a scandal every week. But we do not intend to change anything."

The programme's audience, he maintained, was as large as the number of people who voted for Mr Putin.

Unrepentant

NTV announced in May it was temporarily removing the Putin puppet in response to Kremlin pressure.

"Because someone at the top is upset by the presence of a rubber puppet representing Mr Putin on the show, we decided to experiment by having one show without the Putin puppet," NTV Director-General Yevgeny Kiselev said.

The Putin puppet was absent from the next edition of "Kukly," but the barbs fired at him were not.

The show presented Mr Putin's chief of staff as Moses bringing pronouncements down from God - Putin - who was so exalted no one was allowed to see him or even pronounce his name.

KGB man

The latest edition of "Kukly" portrayed Mr Putin - a former KGB man - trying to recruit President Clinton to work for the KGB during Mr Clinton's visit to Moscow.

"His codename: the Saxophonist. Lieutenant Maria Ivanovna Levinsky has already made contact. He likes cigars."

Mr Putin himself said he has watched "Kukly" "but only a couple of times." "It doesn't annoy me," he said, "but my friends take offence."

Political foes

NTV and its parent company Media-Most have been under pressure for months from the Putin government, with Mr Putin's aides treating Media-Most owner Vladimir Gusinsky as one of their main political foes.

The pressure on "Kukly" probably reflects this political hostility, and resentment at the programme's portrayal of Mr Putin.

For its part, NTV appears to have no intention of modifying "Kukly" to mollify Mr Putin, and is counting on the show's popularity to hold off more drastic action.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.

The Russian Federation's New (1993) Constitutional System Was Built Virtually From Scratch

noreply@blogger.com (ITSSD Charitable Mission) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 22:13:00 +0000

http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/fplegal/research/systems.htm

Russian Legal Information Sources

By Ilya V. Nikiforov

((c) 1995)

This article was written during my stay at Case Western Reserve University. I thank Professor Ronald Coffey for the cooperation on this matter.

During the transition process Russia needs to rebuild its legal system virtually from the ground up. The transition period has been marked by numerous laws issued by various branches of government. Indeed, legal realities in our country keep changing at a tremendous speed.

At the same time as a result of 70-year period of administrative government, when legal regulations were often kept secret, Russia was lacking mechanisms or channels for fast and effective dissemination of legal data. At least the exisiting mechanisms were not suitable for free enterpreneurship.

To meet the need for timely receipt of recent information new russian businesses actively use computerised legal information systems and other electronic information sources that are described in this paper.

On its way to a free market economy and a democratic government, Russia needs to rebuild its legal system virtually from the ground up. The transition period has been marked by numerous laws issued by various branches of government. Indeed, legal realities in our country keep changing at a tremendous speed. The federal government abolishes old prohibitions and introduces new rules every day. An estimated 10,000 legal acts are adopted on the federal level every year. In this situation, ignorance of recent legislation is likely to force firms out of business. The legal practitioner who relies on a year-old statute may find himself involved in a malpractice suit.

Of course, such an unstable situation is not the best environment for young Russian businesses, but we must take it as a given. It is how things are done in Russia, and arguably the fundamental reconstruction of the whole economic system in our country could not occur any other way. In the survey conducted by The Heritage Foundation using the "Index Of Economic Freedom"1 Russia was ranked was 73rd out of 101 regions graded in order from the most economically free to least economically free2 . The country appeared to be among "mostly unfree" states due to political and legislative unstability. However, local entrepreneurs de facto do not have freedom of choice when determining the place for their activity. All they can do is try to cope with the changing legal reality. Great risks often promise high benefits, - many of the "new Russians" that have begun from scratch have acquired, in these first years of free entrepreneurship, millions of dollars of capital.3

The foregoing shows the importance of knowledge of up-to-date Russian business law. Control over information is one of the means a totalitarian government uses to exercise its power. As a consequence of long-established administrative methods of state government, the beginning of the new Russian period was lacking mechanisms or channels for fast and effective dissemination of legal data.

The demand for these types of services was met by new commercial systems. As a matter of fact, most of the successfully marketed legal information systems that are reviewed in this paper were developed and are offered by commercial businesses. Some government agencies maintain legal databases too, but their services generally are not offered for sale. The notable exception is the "Etalon" database, developed by the Scientific Center for Legal Information of the Justice Ministry of Russia. Because all legal information originates in government institutions, these governmental systems, intended for the internal use, have the most recent and accurate information. Other institutions prefer to use the commercial services. For example, the St. Petersburg Mayor's Office appointed maloe predpriyatie4 "Centr Komputernykh Rasrabotok" to be a depository ("databank" is the language of the order) of local laws and charged it with the duty to supply legal information to divisions of the Mayor's office and district administrations using the commercial legal information system, "Kodeks," developed by this firm (Mayor's Order N 18-p, dated 12 January 1994, "O banke dannykh pravovoi infomatcii merii Sankt-Peterburga"). Similar arrangements were made by the Moscow City government with the developers of the "Garant" and "USIS" databases.

Access to Russian documents may be useful not only for businessmen operating in our country but also for Western attorneys and law professors. The following text will contain a brief description of different providers of computer accessible legal information and their products. Arguably, to get a full understanding of the Russian law you should be able to read in Russian. Unfortunately, at present the translations of Russian laws that are offered by Lexis and Westlaw as well as Russian commercial legal information services are not accurate enough to use as a sole source. Although the leader of this market, "Garant," has a vast and expensive database including over 2,2005 translated items ("Kodeks" offers a substantially cheaper database that comprises only 500 basic items), you had better always keep one eye on the original Russian text.

Today there are more than 40 providers of computerized legal information services in Russia, but 4 main competitors in the market for stand-alone systems far overshadow the others in terms of volume of sales and amount of information offered to customers. The leaders are: "Garant" (developed by the firm "Garant-Service"), "Kodeks" ("Centr Komputernykh Rasrabotok"), "Consultant Plus" ("Vychislitelnaya Matematika i Informatika"), and "USIS" ("Juridicheskoe agenstvo 'Intralex'"). Developers of all of these systems except Kodeks are located in Moscow. The developers of the Kodeks database are in St. Petersburg and have a strong influence upon the market of these products in the Northwest region of Russia.

A unique feature of the Russian market for computerized legal information services is a strong reliance upon stand-alone systems as opposed to on-line systems like Lexis and Westlaw. This is due to two primary factors: weak development of a telecommunications infrastructure (even regular voice phone lines are in a short supply and are of poor quality) and a smaller (compared to western countries) volume of laws (our legal history is at its very beginning and the legislature is still unable to overwhelm hard drive capacity). The user of these stand-alone systems must be ready to pay from 300 up to 3,000 dollars for installation of such a system, depending on his particular needs (this payment ensures supplementation with new documents at low - about 15 dollars for one supplement - subscription prices). It is worth mentioning that no system can be regarded as a comprehensive and exhaustive source of legal information. Smaller customers with limited funds must choose the system that suits their needs best, while larger law firms prefer to have several systems. These firms gain an opportunity to use, for a specific type of legal research, the product that accomplishes the task best. They also have access to a greater number of legal documents.

To meet the need for timely receipt of recent information, developers of most legal databases provide periodic supplements to their data that are called "updates." Some of them (USIS, and Garant) are switching now from weekly to daily updates. Use of telecommunications facilities proved to be more economically efficient for same-day delivery of new data. All of the major database service providers operate direct dial-in bulletin board systems and offer sending of updates through e-mail as an alternative. The user must be ready to pay an applicable e-mail service provider charges (3-4 dollars) in addition to the regular price for each update transferred by e-mail.

Another important characteristic of these services is the period of time between issuance of the official document and the delivery of the document to the customer. Time is required to transfer the information, process it in accordance with system structure, and deliver it to customers. Usually this delay is about 10-14 days. Sometimes users of such systems receive the document even before it is officially published.

At this point, an unusual concept used to build the legal information retrieval system Consultant Plus should be noted. I will call it the "remote database concept." The user of this system may have only a cardfile of laws on his computer, while full texts are stored in the database on a remote server. The user can search through the cardfile, which is regularly updated. As soon as he needs the full text of a specific document, the shell will automatically request this text from the remote database using built-in tools. These requests and the results thereof are sent through the e-mail network or via direct modem connection (the user is billed for this operation). Lower expense (the user pays only for texts of the documents he actually needs) and less use of hard drive space make this system attractive for businesses with limited funds. On the other hand, if the user chooses, he can buy the entire set of documents at any time, thus becoming an independent owner of a stand-alone database. At present, Consultant Plus has over 210 regional centers that serve requests of users and handle full-text database.

And there are other opportunities. The menu is not limited to the stand-alone databases. Other computerized legal sources include newsletters distributed to subscribers as e-mail messages. For instance, weekly expedited information about legislation is distributed by "Dom juridicheskoi informatcii Justicinform" (they also have a printed publication, "Pravo i economica"), which includes the full texts of new laws and reviews prepared by lawyers. There is also an electronic edition of "Economica i Zhizn," a weekly that is recognized by Russian businessmen to be the most reliable source of economic and legal information on all business-related matters. Some services offer modem access to on-line legal databases; for example, a Moscow company, "Infonet," provides daily updates to its gopher-type service that offers legal documents. Users can reach this service by dialing local numbers in many regional centers.

In producing their services, all private suppliers of legal information rely on special agreements with official bodies and official publications. The new Constitution of Russia provides that unpublished new laws shall not be applied6 . On the federal level, publication was regulated by the Decree of the President No. 662, dated 6 April 1994: "On the procedure for publication and effective date of federal laws." The daily newspaper, "Rossiiskaya Gazeta," and the weekly "Sobranie Zakonodatelstva Rossiiskoi Federatcii" are specified as the official sources for the publication of laws adopted by the Parliament, Decrees and Orders of the President and the Government and the decisions of the Constitutional Court. If the statute itself does not contain an effective date, it will become effective within 10 days after publication in an official source. The Decree was later vacated by the Law of Russian Federation No. 5-fz, dated 14 June 1994, which contained, however, essentially the same provisions7 .

Rules and regulations adopted by administrative agencies and other lower executive bodies are published in the daily newspaper "Rossiiskie Vesti."

Other printed publications of law-related information include the weekly, "Economica i Zhizn," which has a CD-ROM archive of back issues. Judicial decisions may be found in "Bulletin Verhovnogo Suda RF" and "Vestnik Vysshego Arbitrahnogo Suda." Rules, regulations, and orders of ministries are published in "Bulletin Normativnykh Aktov Ministerstv i Vedomstv." The monthly electronic journal, "Delo i Pravo," publishes many commentaries and provides good coverage of taxation regulations.

Regarding this entire range of sources of legal information, it is necessary to understand the foundation upon which all legal information systems are built, and so we take a quick look on the types of primary legal sources existing in Russian legal system.

Like most continental law systems, ours is based upon a Code mentality. Court decisions do not play as important a role as they do with respect to law-making (as contrasted with judicial interpretation) in common law systems, and lower court opinions usually are not handled by legal information services8 . The only exceptions are the decisions of the country's higher judicial bodies-the Constitutional Court, Vyshshii Arbitrazhniy Sud (Supreme Court Of Business Claims) 9 , and Verhovniy Sud (the Supreme Court of general jurisdiction)-that take the form of Postanovlenie Plenuma 10 (Opinions) or Rukovodyaschee Razyasnenie (Authoritative Explanation).

There is also a practice of communication to the lower courts of the letters containing Review of Court Decisions. These decisions have all the attributes of usual legislative and regulatory materials for purposes of data search and can be easily accessed using the existing search mechanisms of the respective legal information retrieval systems. All four major systems include the decisions of the Supreme Court Of Business Claims and the Supreme Court (of General Jurisdiction) of Russia, but the coverage is selective and thus not comprehensive. Sometimes you can find in one system a certain decision of a judicial body that is not included in the other.

The mentioned forms of Court decisions - Postanovlenie Plenuma (Opinions) do not resolve the particular legal dispute. They are rather explanatory rulings that based on the analysis of previous court practice and relevant statutes. The judicial opinions on the actual cases are published irregularly and are used rather to explain the proper judicial interpretation of the statutory provision rather than to be used as the controlling authority (precedent) in the subsequent cases.

Judges usually follow the guidelines set by the explanatory rulings of the Supreme Court, but they are not legally obliged to do so. On the contrary, according to the Art.30 Law On The Court Of Business Claims (July 4, 1991) judges of all courts of this system are obliged to follow the explanatory rulings carried out by the Plenum of the Vyshshii Arbitrazhniy Sud (Supreme Court Of Business Claims).

Judicial system. Russia do not have two separate systems of federal and regional courts so far. All the courts are the parts of the single system. The situation may be changed by the federal constitutional law "On the Justice System of Russian Federation".

The Constitution is the primary source of law in Russia. It has supreme legal force and effect and is applicable throughout the entire territory of the Russian Federation. No laws adopted by the Russian Federation may contravene the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

Two types of legislation are enacted by the Parliament: federal laws and federal constitutional laws, which are the second most important sources of law. Between the latter, federal constitutional laws take precedence.

The procedure for adopting the law is set in the Art 104-108 of the Constitution. Federal Constitutional Laws are adopted in accordance with the procedure set in the Art. 108 of the Constitution (it must be approved by a majority of the votes of at least three-quarters of the total number of members of the Federation Council and at least two-thirds of the total number of deputies of the State Duma. A federal constitutional law that has been adopted is to be signed by the president of the Russian Federation and promulgated within 14 days) on the most important matters, including:

· individual restrictions of rights and freedoms, with an indication of their extent and duration, that can be introduced under the state of emergency regime in order to ensure the safety of citizens and the protection of the constitutional system;
· procedure for the establishment of the state of emergency regime and the circumstances when it such regime may be established;
· procedure for the admission of the new subunit to the Russian Federation and the formation of the new subunit within the Russian Federation
· procedure for the change of status of the subunit of Russian Federation;
· the State Flag, Emblem and Anthem of the Russian Federation, their description and the procedure for their official use;
· the procedure for the nationwide vote- Referendum;
· the statement on the war footing;;
· office of the commissioner for human rights and its activity;
· government of Russian Federation and its activity;
· the judicial system of the Russian Federation;
· procedure for the convention of the Constitutional Assembly.
· powers and the procedure for the formation and activity of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the Superior Court of Arbitration of the Russian Federation and other federal courts;

Acts of executive bodies must conform to the legislation. There are several types of federal executive bodies: Ministry, State Committee, Committee, Federal Service, Federal Agency and Federal Inspection. They are created by the President in accordance with the Decree of the President: "On the System of the Federal Bodies of the Executive Power" of September 30, 1992 N 1147.. The most important bodies of federal executive power that issue a significant volume of regulatory legal acts today are: Central Bank of Russian Federation (currency regulation and bank legislation), State Customs Committee of Russian Federation(external economic operations), State Committee for the Administration of State Property(privatization), and State Taxation Service.

Software used for stand-alone databases allows retrieval of documents that satisfy certain formal requirements: usually search criteria such as date and number of the item, type of item and t he authority that issued it, and printed publication reference. Words appearing in the title of the document can be combined by Boolean search operators such as "AND" and "OR." All systems allow the retrieval, using Boolean search rules, of documents that contain specified words not only in the title but also in the text of the document, but in some systems (especially USIS) full text searches work slowly.

The developers of the databases have included in their software a feature that allows assignment of specified "keywords" or "topics" to the documents. These keywords are assigned by legal experts to every document in the database, and each document may have more than one keyword associated with it. In most systems, search by topic can be combined with other criteria. Nevertheless, cautious use of these keywords is recommended; relying too heavily on them may cause you to miss important sources.

Many systems provide switching between related documents (a kind of "shepardizing" statutes). Thus, you may easily find which government rules, regulations, or orders were issued to implement the provisions of the law and which actions other executive agencies have taken to enforce it, or, vice versa, which enabling legislation empowered the executive agency to issue a piece of delegated regulation. Some systems (Kodeks, USIS, and Garant) include not only laws but also comments and reviews prepared by professional lawyers. It makes them a comprehensive tool for legal research in Russian law.

It should be mentioned that not all legislation is adopted at the federal level. Article 76.4. of the Constitution provides that, outside of the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the governmental subunits of the Russian Federation, the republics, territories, regions, federal cities, autonomous, regions and autonomous areas shall establish their own legal regimes, including the adoption of legislation and other regulations.

Though the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation is very wide, as will be shown, there are still many important matters left to the governmental subunits of the federation. The breadth and limits of federal jurisdiction are specified in the following constitutional provisions.

Article 71. The jurisdiction of the Russian Federation shall include:

a) adoption and amendment of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws and supervision of compliance with them;
b) the federal structure and territory of the Russian Federation;
c) regulation and protection of the rights and liberties of the individual and citizen; citizenship of the Russian Federation; and regulation and protection of the rights of national minorities;
d) establishment of a system of federal bodies of legislative, executive, and judicial power; procedures for the organization and activities thereof; formation of federal bodies of state power; and federal and state property and management thereof;
e) determining the basic principles of federal policy and federal programs in the field of national structure, the economy, the environment, and the social, cultural, and national development of the Russian Federation;
f) establishment of the legal framework for a single market; financial, monetary, credit, and customs regulation; issuance of money and guidelines for price policy; and federal economic services, including federal banks;
g) the federal budget; federal taxes and levies; and federal funds for regional development;
h) federal power grids, nuclear energy, and fissionable materials; federal transportation, railways, information, and communications; and space activities;
i) foreign policy and international relations of the Russian Federation, international treaties of the Russian Federation, questions of war and peace;
j) foreign trade relations of the Russian Federation;
k) defense and security; defense production; determining procedures for the sale and purchase of arms, ammunition, military hardware, and other equipment; production of fissionable materials, toxic substances, and narcotics and procedures for the use thereof;
l) defining the status and protection of the national border, territorial waters, air space, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf of the Russian Federation;
m) law courts; Attorney General's office; criminal, criminal-procedure and penitentiary legislation; amnesty and pardon; civil, civil-procedure, and arbitration procedure legislation; and legal regulation of intellectual property;
n) federal conflict of laws rules;
o) meteorological service; standards, models, the metric system, and time measurement; geodesy and cartography; names of geographical objects; official statistics and accounting;
p) state decorations and honorary titles of the Russian Federation;
q) federal national service.

On matters of joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the governmental subunits of the Russian Federation, federal laws must be issued and, in accordance with them, the legislation and other regulation of the governmental subunits of the Russian Federation shall be adopted. If the law of a local jurisdiction fails to satisfy this requirement, it shall not be applied.

Article 72.1 of the Constitution provides: the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the governmental subunits of the Russian Federation shall include:

a) ensuring compliance of the constitutions and laws of the republics, charters, laws, and other regulations of the territories, regions, federal cities, autonomous regions, and autonomous areas with the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws;
b) protection of the rights and freedoms of the individual and citizen; protection of the rights of ethnic minorities; maintainance of the rule of law and public order, public safety; and border zone regulation;
c) issues of the possession, use, and management of land, mineral resources, water, and other natural resources;
d) allocation of state property11 ;
e) management of natural resources, protection of the environment and ecological safety; specially protected natural reserves; and protection of historical and cultural monuments;
f) general questions of upbringing, education, science, culture, physicial culture and sports;
g) coordination of health issues, protection of the family, motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood; and social protection including social security;
h) implementing measures to combat catastrophes, natural disasters, epidemics, and eliminating the consequences thereof;
i) establishment of general guidelines for taxation and levies in the Russian Federation;
j) administrative, administrative-procedure, labor, family, housing, land, water, and forestry legislation and legislation on the sub-surface and environmental protection;
k) personnel of the judiciary and law-enforcement agencies; the bar; and notaries;
l) protection of the original environment and traditional way of life of small ethnic communities;
m) establishment of general guidelines for the organization of a system of agencies of state power and local self-government; and
n) coordination of the international and external economic relations of the subunits of the Russian Federation, and compliance with the international treaties of the Russian Federation.

2. The provisions of this Article shall apply equally to the republics, territories, regions, federal cities, autonomous regions, and autonomous areas.

As provided in article 73, outside of the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the powers of the Russian Federation on issues within the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the governmental subunits of the Russian Federation, such subunits shall exercise full governmental power. At this point it is time to return to general topic of this review.

With the development of the law-making activity of local bodies, access to local legislation became necessary. While virtually every service provider tracks the legislation of Moscow (and Moscow region) and Saint-Petersburg, two main business centers of our country, other regions remain uncovered. Because of its special feature enabling remote access to database and development policy, Consultant Plus is expected to have the best coverage of legislation at lower levels. This firm encourages its regional representatives to create databases of the legislation of their region. Design of software that includes built-in facilities for access over telecommunications lines to remote database services will make it easy to access these regional bases.

Not only does the Russian legislature adopt new acts; it also keeps amending old laws. Information retrieval systems allow users to see text that includes recent amendments. They also contain the very acts that are passed to change the old law. If you need not only to know the essence of current law but also to research the legislative history of certain provisions, hypertext-based systems such as Garant will make it easy for you. Just point to the hypertext link, and the system will bring up the new revision alongside the original text.

By contrast, some service providers, for instance Kodeks, offer a separate database that contains an archive of repealed laws and original texts of laws that were later amended. This database may be of interest to legal researchers or sometimes, in specific circumstances, to litigators (as a general rule a law that was in force at the time of the conduct shall be applied by a Russian court, even if that law has been repealed by the time of the proceedings; however, especially in the criminal sphere, if a new law eliminates or mitigates liability, it will be applied by the court).

Legal information retrieval system "Jurisconsult," developed by TOO12 "Informationniye systemy i tekhnologii," though generally outside the scope of this review, is worth mentioning here because of its sophisticated search methods that provide effective results without complexity. Sometimes it works as a real expert system. Inventions used to build this retrieval system are protected by the certificate of authorship 13 .

What is the future of Russian legal information systems? Apparently, the stand-alone databases can be easily transferred to CD-ROMs (such products are already offered by Garant, Consultant Plus and USIS). The only problem with this trend is the need to replace the entire disk with each update. Forthcoming magnito-optical disk drives that offer high capacity at moderate prices may be one of the possible solutions. Another trend is movement to other platforms and operating environments. All of the systems already have Windows versions. Network versions are also available for all systems. We may expect the use of Macintosh or UNIX computers for some implementations in the future.

With the growth of the volume of legal sources, suppliers of this information will rely more upon on-line services. Development of international trade and finance will impose a requirement to cooperate with Western legal information service providers. This cooperation will be mutually beneficial; western businessmen will receive authentic information about Russian law, and their Russian partners will have the opportunity to browse foreign laws14 .

First projects of this kind are already started. For instance, on the WWW server http://www.techno.ru/you may find DataBases on the Russian and International Law developed by the Company "INEC" (the name means Information - Economics). The topics include legal regulation of bank activity and export-import operations (with russian texts of more than 50 international agreements). "Kodeks" developers are setting up on-line version of their bases avalable for both WAIS and WWW searches. The similar project was initiated in spring 1994 by the Company "Inforis" located in Nizhniy Novgorod (Inforis Document DataBase ), but the present status of this venture is unclear - documents there seem to be outdated. Notably this server contains local documents of Nizhniy Novgorod and the region. Consultant Plus is trying to port its databases to WWW technology. Some comments to russian legislation (translated to English) and english texts of the related legal acts are located on the WWW server: http://www.spb.su/.

If you or your university are engaged in a Russian studies program, it may be worth looking at the collection of files that is placed on the anonymous FTP site trans.csuohio.edu (directory /pub/russian_law. Login as anonymous and send your e-mail address as password). Demo versions of legal information retrieval systems Consultant Plus and Kodeks that are posted there include a cardfile of current Russian legislation (more than 3,000 records that include the name of the act, issuing authority, date of enactment, and the reference to printed publication). You may find these demo versions to be a useful tool, at least at the first stage of legal research.

Copyright (C) Ilya Nikiforov, 1995

1. "Index" is determined on the basis of the degree of econoic freedom that each country allows in 10 key areas: trade policy, taxation policy, government consumption of economic output, monetary policy, capital flows and foreign investment, banking policy, wage and price controls, property rights, regulations and the balck market

2. Kim Holmes. In Search of Free Markets. The Wall Street Journal. December 12, 1994.

3. In 1993 the number of luxury cars that "Mercedes" had sold in Moscow exceeded its aggregated sales of these cars in the rest of the Europe.

4. One of the first legal forms of for-profit businesses in Russia; the English translation would be "small firm".

5. Here and further data are taken from: Rossiiskie sistemy pravovoi informatcii. Moscow. Inventa. 1994.

6. Article 15 of the present Constitution provides as follows: "Laws shall be officially published. Unpublished laws shall not be applied. No law affecting the rights, liberties, or duties of the individual and the citizen may apply unless it has been published officially for general knowledge."

7. One provision that is related to the topic of this paper is missing from the law. This provision concerns electronic dissemination of the official texts of acts through the legal information system "Sistema." The future of this provision and the system itself remains unclear.

8. Lower court opinions may be studied within the framework of the special research projects but are rarely used in litigation.

9. although the title of this judicial body is usually translated to as "the Court of Arbitration", it shall not confused with independent arbitration institution.

10. "Plenum" in Russia means the Court sitting en bank.

11. It means allocation of state property amongst federal jurisdiction, jurisdiction of subunits of federation and jurisdiction of lower administrative units.

12. Limited Partnership.

13. Form of intellectual property protection used during the soviet period as a counterpart to patent protection.

14. At present Russian legal experts recommend to domestic businesses to include in international contracts choice of law clause that stipulate that the law of major continental european country (France or Germany) shall be applicable to relationships of the parties because "it is difficut to accertain the contents of the laws of the other countries".

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http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-01.htm

The CONSTITUTION of the RUSSIAN FEDERATION

We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common fate on our land, establishing human rights and freedoms, civic peace and accord, preserving the historically established state unity, proceeding from the universally recognized principles of equality and self-determination of peoples, revering the memory of ancestors who have conveyed to us the love for the Fatherland, belief in the good and justice, reviving the sovereign statehood of Russia and asserting the firmness of its democratic basic, striving to ensure the well-being and prosperity of Russia, proceeding from the responsibility for our Fatherland before the present and future generations, recognizing ourselves as part of the world community, adopt the CONSTITUTION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

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http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-02.htm

First Section. Main Provisions
Chapter 1. The Fundamentals of the Constitutional System

Article 1

The Russian Federation - Russia is a democratic federal law-bound State with a republican form of government.
The names "Russian Federation" and "Russia" shall be equal.

Article 2

Man, his rights and freedoms are the supreme value. The recognition, observance and protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be the obligation of the State.

Article 3

1. The bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation shall be its multinational people.
2. The people shall exercise their power directly, and also through the bodies of state power and local self-government.
3. The supreme direct expression of the power of the people shall be referenda and free elections.
4. No one may usurp power in the Russian Federation. Seizure of power or usurping state authority shall be prosecuted by federal law.

Article 4

1. The sovereignty of the Russian Federation shall cover the whole of its territory.
2. The Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal laws shall have supremacy in the whole territory of the Russian Federation.
3. The Russian Federation shall ensure the integrity and inviolability of its territory.

Article 5

1. The Russian Federation consists of Republics, territories, regions, cities of federal importance, an autonomous region and autonomous areas - equal subjects of the Russian Federation.
2. The Republic (State) shall have its own constitution and legislation. The territory, region, city of federal importance, autonomous region and autonomous area shall have its charter and legislation.
3. The federal structure of the Russian Federation is based on its state integrity, the unity of the system of state authority, the division of subjects of authority and powers between the bodies of state power of the Russian Federation and bodies of state power of the subjects of the Russian Federation, the equality and self-determination of peoples in the Russian Federation.
4. In relations with federal bodies of state authority all the subjects of the Russian Federation shall be equal among themselves.

Article 6

1. The citizenship of the Russian Federation shall be acquired and terminated according to federal law; it shall be one and equal, irrespective of the grounds of acquisition.
2. Every citizen of the Russian Federation shall enjoy in its territory all the rights and freedoms and bear equal duties provided for by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
3. A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deprived of his or her citizenship or of the right to change it.

Article 7

1. The Russian Federation is a social State whose policy is aimed at creating conditions for a worthy life and a free development of man.
2. In the Russian Federation the labour and health of people shall be protected, a guaranteed minimum wages and salaries shall be established, state support ensured to the family, maternity, paternity and childhood, to disabled persons and the elderly, the system of social services developed, state pensions, allowances and other social security guarantees shall be established.

Article 8

1. In the Russian Federation guarantees shall be provided for the integrity of economic space, a free flow of goods, services and financial resources, support for competition, and the freedom of economic activity.
2. In the Russian Federation recognition and equal protection shall be given to the private, state, municipal and other forms of ownership.

Article 9

1. Land and other natural resources shall be utilized and protected in the Russian Federation as the basis of life and activity of the people living in corresponding territories.
2. Land and other natural resources may be in private, state, municipal and other forms of ownership.

Article 10

The state power in the Russian Federation shall be exercised on the basis of its division into legislative, executive and judicial power. The bodies of legislative, executive and judicial power shall be independent.

Article 11

1. The state power in the Russian Federation shall be exercised by the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Assembly (the Council of the Federation and the State Duma), the Government of the Russian Federation, and the courts of the Russian Federation.
2. The state power in the subjects of the Russian Federation shall be exercised by the bodies of state authority created by them.
3. The division of subjects of authority and power among the bodies of state power of the Russian Federation and the bodies of state power of the subjects of the Russian Federation shall be fixed by the given Constitution, the Federal and other treaties on the delimitation of the subjects of authority and powers.

Article 12

In the Russian Federation local self-government shall be recognized and guaranteed. Local self-government shall be independent within the limits of its authority. The bodies of local self-government shall not be part of the system of bodies of state authority.

Article 13

1. In the Russian Federation ideological diversity shall be recognized.
2. No ideology may be established as state or obligatory one.
3. In the Russian Federation political diversity and multi-party system shall be recognized.
4. Public associations shall be equal before the law.
5. The creation and activities of public associations whose aims and actions are aimed at a forced change of the fundamental principles of the constitutional system and at violating the integrity of the Russian Federation, at undermining its security, at setting up armed units, and at instigating social, racial, national and religious strife shall be prohibited.

Article 14

1. The Russian Federation is a secular state. No religion may be established as a state or obligatory one.
2. Religious associations shall be separated from the State and shall be equal before the law.

Article 15

1. The Constitution of the Russian Federation shall have the supreme juridical force, direct action and shall be used on the whole territory of the Russian Federation. Laws and other legal acts adopted in the Russian Federation shall not contradict the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
2. The bodies of state authority, the bodies of local self-government, officials, private citizens and their associations shall be obliged to observe the Constitution of the Russian Federation and laws.
3. Laws shall be officially published. Unpublished laws shall not be used. Any normative legal acts concerning human rights, freedoms and duties of man and citizen may not be used, if they are not officially published for general knowledge.
4. The universally-recognized norms of international law and international treaties and agreements of the Russian Federation shall be a component part of its legal system. If an international treaty or agreement of the Russian Federation fixes other rules than those envisaged by law, the rules of the international agreement shall be applied.

Article 16

1. The provisions of the present chapter of the Constitution comprise the fundamental principles of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, and may not be changed otherwise than according to the rules established by the present Constitution.
2. No other provision of the present Constitution may contradict the fundamental principles of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation.

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http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-03.htm

Chapter 2. Rights and Freedoms of Man and Citizen

Article 17

1. In the Russian Federation recognition and guarantees shall be provided for the rights and freedoms of man and citizen according to the universally recognized principles and norms of international law and according to the present Constitution.
2. Fundamental human rights and freedoms are inalienable and shall be enjoyed by everyone since the day of birth.
3. The exercise of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall not violate the rights and freedoms of other people.

Article 18

The rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be directly operative. They determine the essence, meaning and implementation of laws, the activities of the legislative and executive authorities, local self-government and shall be ensured by the administration of justice.

Article 19

1. All people shall be equal before the law and court.
2. The State shall guarantee the equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, property and official status, place of residence, religion, convictions, membership of public associations, and also of other circumstances. All forms of limitations of human rights on social, racial, national, linguistic or religious grounds shall be banned.
3. Man and woman shall enjoy equal rights and freedoms and have equal possibilities to exercise them.

Article 20

1. Everyone shall have the right to life.
2. Capital punishment until its complete elimination may be envisaged by a federal law as an exclusive penalty for especially grave crimes against life, and the accused shall be granted the right to have his case examined by jurytrial.

Article 21

1. Human dignity shall be protected by the State. Nothing may serve as a basis for its derogation.
2. No one shall be subject to torture, violence or other severe or humiliating treatment or punishment. No one may be subject to medical, scientific and other experiments without voluntary consent.

Article 22

1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom and personal immunity.
2. Arrest, detention and remanding in custody shall be allowed only by court decision. Without the court's decision a person may be detained for a term more than 48 hours.

Article 23

1. Everyone shall have the right to the inviolability of private life, personal and family secrets, the protection of honour and good name.
2. Everyone shall have the right to privacy of correspondence, of telephone conversations, postal, telegraph and other messages. Limitations of this right shall be allowed only by court decision.

Article 24

1. The collection, keeping, use and dissemination of information about the private life of a person shall not be allowed without his or her consent.
2. The bodies of state authority and local self-government, their officials shall ensure for everyone the possibility of acquainting with the documents and materials directly affecting his or her rights and freedoms, unless otherwise provided for by law.

Article 25

The home shall be inviolable. No one shall have the right to get into a house against the will of those living there, except for the cases established by a federal law or by court decision.

Article 26

1. Everyone shall have the right to determine and indicate his nationality. No one may be forced to determine and indicate his or her nationality.
2. Everyone shall have the right to use his or her native language, to a free choice of the language of communication, upbringing, education and creative work.

Article 27

1. Every who legally stays in the territory of the Russian Federation shall have the right to free travel, choice of place of stay or residence.
2. Everyone may freely leave the Russian Federation. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to freely return to the Russian Federation.

Article 28

Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of conscience, the freedom of religion, including the right to profess individually or together with other any religion or to profess no religion at all, to freely choose, possess and disseminate religious and other views and act according to them.

Article 29

1. Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech.
2. The propaganda or agitation instigating social, racial, national or religious hatred and strife shall not be allowed. The propaganda of social, racial, national, religious or linguistic supremacy shall be banned.
3. No one may be forced to express his views and convictions or to reject them.
4. Everyone shall have the right to freely look for, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by any legal way. The list of data comprising state secrets shall be determined by a federal law.
5. The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed. Censorship shall be banned.

Article 30

1. Everyone shall have the right to association, including the right to create trade unions for the protection of his or her interests. The freedom of activity of public association shall be guaranteed.
2. No one may be compelled to join any association and remain in it.

Article 31

Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets.

Article 32

1. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to participate in managing state affairs both directly and through their representatives.
2. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to elect and be elected to state bodies of power and local self-government bodies, and also to participate in referenda.
3. Deprived of the right to elect and be elected shall be citizens recognized by court as legally unfit, as well as citizens kept in places of confinement by a court sentence.
4. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall enjoy equal access to the state service.
5. Citizens of the expenditures shall have the right to participate in administering justice.

Article 33

Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to address personally, as well as to submit individual and collective appeals to state organs and local self-government bodies.

Article 34

1. Everyone shall have the right to a free use of his abilities and property for entrepreneurial and economic activities not prohibited by law.
2. The economic activity aimed at monopolization and unfair competition shall not be allowed.

Article 35

1. The right of private property shall be protected by law.
2. Everyone shall have the right to have property, possess, use and dispose of it both personally and jointly with other people.
3. No one may be deprived of property otherwise than by a court decision. Forced confiscation of property for state needs may be carried out only on the proviso of preliminary and complete compensation.
4. The right of inheritance shall be guaranteed.

Article 36

1. Citizens and their associations shall have the right to possess land as private property.
2. Possession, utilization and disposal of land and other natural resources shall be exercised by the owners freely, if it is not detrimental to the environment and does not violate the rights and lawful interests of other people.
3. The terms and rules for the use of land shall be fixed by a federal law.

Article 37

1. Labour is free. Everyone shall have the right to freely use his labour capabilities, to choose the type of activity and profession.
2. Forced labour shall be banned.
3. Everyone shall have the right to labour conditions meeting the safety and hygienic requirements, for labour remuneration without any discrimination whatsoever and not lower than minimum wages and salaries established by the federal law, as well as the right to protection against unemployment.
4. Recognition shall be given to the right to individual and collective labour disputes with the use of methods of their adjustment fixed by the federal law, including the right to strike.
5. Everyone shall have the right to rest and license. Those working by labour contracts shall be guaranteed the fixed duration of the working time, days off and holidays, and the annual paid leave established by the federal law.

Article 38

1. Maternity and childhood, and the family shall be protected by the State.
2. Care for children, their upbringing shall be equally the right and obligation of parents.
3. Able-bodied children over 18 years of age shall take care of disabled parents.

Article 39

1. Everyone shall be guaranteed social security at the expense of the State in old age, in case of an illness, disableness, loss of the bread-winner, for upbringing of children and in other cases established by law.
2. State pensions and social allowances shall be established by law.
3. Promotion shall be given to voluntary social insurance and the creation of additional forms of social security and charity.

Article 40

1. Everyone shall have the right to a home. No one may be arbitrarily deprived of his or her home.
2. The bodies of state authority and local self-government shall encourage housing construction and create conditions for exercising the right to a home.
3. Low-income people and other persons mentioned in law and in need of a home shall receive it gratis or for reasonable payment from the state, municipal and other housing stocks according to the norms fixed by law.

Article 41

1. Everyone shall have the right to health protection and medical aid. Medical aid in state and municipal health establishments shall be rendered to individuals gratis, at the expense of the corresponding budget, insurance contributions, and other proceeds.
2. In the Russian Federation federal programmes of protecting and strengthening the health of the population shall be financed by the State; measures shall be adopted to develop state, municipal and private health services; activities shall be promoted which facilitate the strengthening of health, the development of physical culture and sport, ecological and sanitary-epidemiological well-being.
3. The concealment by officials of the facts and circumstances posing a threat to the life and health of people shall entail responsibility according to the federal law.

Article 42

Everyone shall have the right to favourable environment, reliable information about its state and for a restitution of damage inflicted on his health and property by ecological transgressions.

Article 43

1. Everyone shall have the right to education.
2. Guarantees shall be provided for general access to and free pre-school, secondary and high vocational education in state or municipal educational establishments and at enterprises.
3. Everyone shall have the right to receive on a competitive basis a free higher education in a state or municipal educational establishment and at an enterprise.
4. The basic general education shall be free of charge. Parents or persons in law parents shall enable their children to receive a basic general education.
5. The Russian Federation shall establish federal state educational standards and support various forms of education and self-education.

Article 44

1. Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of literary, artistic, scientific, technical and other types of creative activity, and teaching. Intellectual property shall be protected by law.
2. Everyone shall have the right to participate in cultural life and use cultural establishments and to an access to cultural values.
3. Everyone shall be obliged to care for the preservation of cultural and historical heritage and protect monuments of history and culture.

Article 45

1. State protection of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen shall be guaranteed in the Russian Federation.
2. Everyone shall be free to protect his rights and freedoms by all means not prohibited by law.

Article 46

1. Everyone shall be guaranteed judicial protection of his rights and freedoms.
2. Decisions and actions (or inaction) of bodies of state authority and local self-government, public associations and officials may be appealed against in court.
3. Everyone shall have the right to appeal, according to international treaties of the Russian Federation, to international bodies for the protection of human rights and freedoms, if all the existing internal state means of legal protection have been exhausted.

Article 47

1. No one may be deprived of the right to the consideration of his or her case in that court and by that judge in whose cognizance the given case is according to law.
2. The accused of committing a crime shall have the right to the examination of his case by a court of jury in cases envisaged by the federal law.

Article 48

1. Everyone shall be guaranteed the right to qualified legal assistance. In cases envisaged by law the legal assistance shall be free.
2. Any person detained, taken into custody, accused of committing a crime shall have the right to receive assistance of a lawyer (counsel for the defence) from the moment of detention, confinement in custody or facing charges accordingly.

Article 49

1. Everyone accused of committing a crime shall be considered innocent until his guilt is proved according to the rules fixed by the federal law and confirmed by the sentence of a court which has come into legal force.
2. The accused shall not be obliged to prove his innocence.
3. Unremovable doubts about the guilt of a person shall be interpreted in favour of the accused.

Article 50

1. No one may be convicted twice for one and the same crime.
2. In administering justice it shall not be allowed to use evidence received by violating the federal law.
3. Everyone convicted for a crime shall have the right to appeal against the judgement of a superior court according to the rules envisaged by the federal law, as well as to ask for pardon or a mitigation of punishment.

Article 51

1. No one shall be obliged to give incriminating evidence, husband or wife and close relatives the range of whom is determined by the federal law.
2. The federal law may envisage other cases of absolution from the obligation to testify.

Article 52

The rights of victims of crimes and of abuse of office shall be protected by law. The State shall provide access to justice for them and a compensation for sustained damage.

Article 53

Everyone shall have the right for a state compensation for damages caused by unlawful actions (inaction) of bodies of state authority and their officials.

Article 54

1. A law introducing or aggravating responsibility shall not have retrospective effect.
2. No one may bear responsibility for the action which was not regarded as a crime when it was committed. If after violating law the responsibility for that is eliminated or mitigated, a new law shall be applied.

Article 55

1. The listing in the Constitution of the Russian Federation of the fundamental rights and freedoms shall not be interpreted as a rejection or derogation of other universally recognized human rights and freedoms.
2. In the Russian Federation no laws shall be adopted cancelling or derogating human rights and freedoms.
3. The rights and freedoms of man and citizen may be limited by the federal law only to such an extent to which it is necessary for the protection of the fundamental principles of the constitutional system, morality, health, the rights and lawful interests of other people, for ensuring defence of the country and security of the State.

Article 56

1. In conditions of a state of emergency in order to ensure the safety of citizens and the protection of the constitutional system and in accordance with the federal constitutional law certain limitations may be placed on human rights and freedoms with the establishment of their framework and time period.
2. A state of emergency may be introduced in the whole territory of the Russian Federation and in its certain parts in case there are circumstances and according to the rules fixed by the federal constitutional law.
3. The rights and freedoms envisaged in Articles 20, 21, 23 (the first part), 24, 28, 34 (the first part), 40 (the first part), 46-54 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, shall not be liable to limitations.

Article 57

Everyone shall be obliged to pay the legally established taxes and dues. Laws introducing new taxes or deteriorating the position of taxpayers may not have retroactive effect.

Article 58

Everyone shall be obliged to preserve nature and the environment, carefully treat the natural wealth.

Article 59

1. Defence of the Fatherland shall be a duty and obligation of citizens of the Russian Federation.
2. A citizen shall carry out military service according to the federal law.
3. A citizen of the Russian Federation shall have the right to replace military service by alternative civilian service in case his convictions or religious belief contradict military service and also in other cases envisaged by the federal law.

Article 60

A citizen of the Russian Federation may exercise his or her rights and duties in full from the age of 18.

Article 61

1. A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported from Russia or extradited to another State.
2. The Russian Federation shall guarantee to its citizens protection and patronage abroad.

Article 62

1. A citizen of the Russian Federation may have the citizenship of a foreign State (dual citizenship) according to the federal law or an international agreement of the Russian Federation.
2. The possession of a foreign citizenship by a citizen of the Russian Federation shall not derogate his rights and freedoms and shall not free him from the obligations stipulated by the Russian citizenship, unless otherwise provided for by federal law or an international agreement of the Russian Federation.
3. Foreign nationals and stateless persons shall enjoy in the Russian Federation the rights and bear the obligations of citizens of the Russian Federation, except for cases envisaged by the federal law or the international agreement of the Russian Federation.

Article 63

1. The Russian Federation shall grant political asylum to foreign nationals and stateless persons according to the universally recognized norms of international law.
2. In the Russian Federation it shall not be allowed to extradite to other States those people who are persecuted for political convictions, as well as for actions (or inaction) not recognized as a crime in the Russian Federation. The extradition of people accused of a crime, and also the handover of convicts for serving sentences in other States shall be carried out on the basis of the federal law or the international agreement of the Russian Federation.

Article 64

The provisions of the present chapter comprise the basis of the legal status of the individual in the Russian Federation and may not be changed otherwise then according to the rules introduced by the present Constitution.

Chapter 3. The Federal Structure (Art. 65-79)
Chapter 4. The President of the Russian Federation (Art. 80-93)
Chapter 5. The Federal Assembly (Art. 94-109)
Chapter 6. The Government of the Russian Federation (Art. 110-117)
Chapter 7. Judicial Power (Art. 118-129)
Chapter 8. Local Self-government (Art. 130-133)
Chapter 9. Constitutional Amendments and Review of the Constitution (Art. 134-137) Second

Section. Concluding and Transitional Provisions

The Constitution of the Russian Federation (was Adopted at National Voting on December 12, 1993)The Constitution came into force on the day of its official publication.The text of the Constitution was published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper as of December 25, 1993.English translation - "Garant-Service".