MOSCOW, April 21 (RIA Novosti) Kremlin aims to boost Russian interests in U.S./ Differences over gas threaten G8 summit/ Russian-Belarusian air defense/ Government and youth organizations/ Gazprom admits natural gas shortfall/ Bribery in Russia
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Kommersant
Kremlin drafts plan to influence United States
The Kremlin is considering ways to advance Russian interests in the United States. The task was set to the Russian-American Business Council (RABC), whose board of trustees will integrate ranking officials from the presidential administration, the government, and banks.
The government has charged the Finance Ministry with finding funds for this non-governmental organization. In fact, big business will be asked to stump up $50 million.
The Kremlin expects the RABC, which was set up in January 2001, to become the mouthpiece of state propaganda in key countries in an attempt to ape the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The focus will be on developing long-term unofficial relations with crucial figures in the U.S. political establishment, business community and the press.
The closest advisers of the Russian president formulated the idea of creating an agency to lobby Russian interests in the United States because of cooling relations between Vladimir Putin and George Bush. Other, more prosaic reasons are complications in Russia-U.S. talks on accession to the World Trade Organization, Iran and the situation in the Middle East, and the strengthening American positions in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners, a Russian law firm established by Nikolai Egorov, who studied with Putin at the law department of Leningrad State University, specializes in commercial and business law in Russia and abroad. It maintains close relations with the RABC and has an American office. This will allow the RABC to avoid registering in the U.S. as an official lobbying organization.
Vnesheconombank (VEB), Russian Railways (RZD) and several other companies have submitted requests to join the RABC. VEB can finance the RABC on the instructions of the Finance Ministry, for whom it is acting as an intermediary. Offers to sign up to the body will be also made to Gazprom, Rosneft, Vneshtorgbank, Transneft, Severstal Group, Russian Aluminum, TNK-BP, Interros, Rosoboronexport, Surgutneftegaz, LUKoil, Aeroflot, and major media companies, such as television's First Channel, the national state radio and television broadcasting corporation VGTRK, and Gazprom Media.
Gazeta.ru, Vedomosti
G8 summit in St. Petersburg to be mere formality
The European Union has responded toughly to a statement made by Alexei Miller, CEO of Russian energy giant Gazprom, who demanded the freedom to enter European markets, and announced his company's intention to diversify energy suppliers and routes.
Together with gas supplies, the July summit of the Group of Eight club of rich nations devoted to energy security was also put in jeopardy.
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of a Russian foreign politics magazine, said that unless Russia and the EU found a compromise soon, the July summit would become a mere formality: "The Russian-Ukrainian gas war has changed the ideological climate in Europe. There will be a heated dispute, and if they fail to come to terms, they will have nothing to adopt except a very general declaration."
The collision was inevitable because Russia and Europe have different interpretations of the concept of energy security, experts told the paper. Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank, said the idea meant diversifying energy supplies for Europe, whereas for Russia it meant long-term contracts reducing the diversification options.
The political scientist said Gazprom's strategy aimed to "impose a structure that will make it almost impossible for Europe to diversify gas flows."
Valery Nesterov, an analyst with Troika Dialog, a Moscow-based brokerage, said Finland received gas from Russia alone, while Poland and Hungary imported from Russia as much as 90% of their energy.
"Europe does not have any real alternative to Russian gas. Liquefied natural gas from the Middle East is more expensive and supplies are less reliable," he said.
The latest developments have shown that Europe is not going to succumb to Russian pressure, all the more so as Moscow has only a limited freedom of maneuver.
Gazprom's ultimatum to Europe is "a certain bluff," said Lukyanov, as Russia does not have any alternative. "It can speed up the construction of gas pipelines to China, but that will take a few years, and China is not an easy partner either. Russia can hardly hope to sell everything to China, particularly at advantageous prices."
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Russia, Belarus set to establish joint air-defense system
Against the backdrop of economic and political differences Moscow and Minsk are striving to implement joint military and military-technical cooperation projects. It appears that a Russian-Belarusian air-defense system that has been discussed for the last five years will now become a reality.
A joint session of the national defense ministry boards scheduled for April 21 in Minsk is to initial a document that would give supranational functions to the new air-defense system's commander. Lieutenant General Aitech Bizhev, deputy commander of the Russian Air Force, said the future commander of the CIS Joint Air Defense System "would receive the right to send airplanes to the territory of the concerned states without the prior agreement of their political leaders."
Belarus is continuing to beef up its combat potential by deploying several battalions of S-300PS surface-to-air missile systems on its western border with Russian assistance. Bizhev said their target-acquisition and target-hitting range would increase by 400 km and 150km westward.
Military experts said the build-up of the Belarusian air-defense system and efforts to finalize the joint air-defense system were linked with U.S. plans to deploy National Missile Defense (NMD) elements in Poland and other countries. Vladimir Popov, full member of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences, said
S-300PS batteries could also take out ballistic missiles.
"The commander of the Russian Air Force has said that up-to-date air-defense systems will become the mainstay of national aerospace-defense structures, and that Belarus will be covered by aerospace defenses through the joint air-defense system," Popov told the paper.
Moskovskiye Novosti
Government manipulating youth organizations
The government has been showing a heightened interest in winning over young people and the Kremlin has decided to take the lead by pulling them away from "orange revolutionaries" and making them counterrevolutionaries, an analyst told the paper.
Alexander Khramchikhin, head of the analytical department at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the recent developments in neighboring countries, especially in Ukraine, had shown that young people played a significant role in every revolution. Radical opposition youth groups (AKM Youth Communist Group, the National Bolshevik Party, or NBP, Defense) have emerged in Russia. As a result, numerous pro-government youth organizations started to spring up with a sense of competitiveness. Apart from federal movements there emerged regional ones, for example, Locals (Mestnye) in the Moscow Region and Our Country in the Primorye Territory.
However, the government is hardly ready to "cede the country." Even the gerontocracy of the late Communist Party of the Soviet Union lived almost 20 years, and today's government is made up of quite young and energetic people. Nor is it clear that the largest corporations are ready to pay large sums to any noticeable number of new Komsomol members exclusively for their "proactive position in life."
In addition, the Kremlin may soon realize that the "orange revolution" is a myth in Russia, since there are neither the necessary people nor ideas available there. Naturally, the government will pay increasingly less attention to counterrevolutionary organizations, which may create the "Al-Qaida effect." The organization was made by the CIA to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1970s. After the demise of the Soviet Union the founders became tired of their creation, which, however, refused to die obediently. A certain number of proactive and committed youths did join the operating pro-Kremlin organizations. But they would not wish to disperse after their organizers lose interest in them either.
Vremya Novostei
Gazprom owns up to gas shortfall
Russian energy giant Gazprom openly conceded Thursday that it had little natural gas left and in a few years' time Russia would not be able to meet the demands of all consumer countries.
In the view of its deputy head Alexander Ryazanov, constraints will most likely hit those paying non-market prices, i.e., Russian consumers.
Before commercial production begins on the northern Yamal Peninsula (which at best can occur in 2012-2013), the gas monopoly has no serious resources to compensate for the declining output of extensive fields that have been in operation since Soviet times. Ryazanov even said Gazprom had the unprecedented intention to pipe the resources of independent producers, such as LUKoil, TNK-BP, Novatek, and even Yukos. By 2010, these companies can boost output by 45-55 billion cubic meters in the Nadym-Purtazovsky region - the principal incubator for new fields. However, the necessary pipeline capacity will become available only in three years' time.
What Ryazanov classifies as the last largest deposit (with an annual output of over 25-30 billion cubic meters) in the Nadym-Purtazovsky region - the Yuzhno-Russkoye field - will go into operation in 2008. The monopoly will then be left only with reserves that are difficult to develop (the Achimovsky deposits of the Urengoi and Zapolyarny fields contain wet gas with a high percentage of heavy hydrocarbons), which call for special technologies and specific outlays, as well as Yamal resources. They have been in the planning stage for years and require at least $80 billion in capital costs.
Vladimir Milov, the president of the Energy Policy Institute, said that fuel shortages would only become worse. "Gazprom's top managers have not acknowledged gas shortages so openly before," he told the paper, "even though experts pointed to low-running levels three years ago. Now Russia is facing huge problems: the shortages will become greater, most evidently at consumption peaks, or in winter when supplies will be cut."
"Not only Russia, but everybody down the line, will suffer," Milov said. "Gazprom has wasted 15 years over Yamal without investing."
Vedomosti
Graft a fact of daily life in Russia
Every third adult in Russia has given at least one bribe in the last five years. Bribes of 500 rubles (about $18) and 1,000 rubles (about $35) are given most often, according to analysts with the Levada Center, a Moscow-based research organization.
They polled 1,600 Russians in 46 regions in March. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said they had given a bribe in the last five years and 15% in the last year.
Graft is a fact of daily life in Russia, said Alexander Golov, a lead analyst with the Levada Center.
According to the Interior Ministry, 3,159 bribes were registered in the first three months of 2006, or 8% more than in January-March 2005.
People most often give bribes of 500, 1,000 (30%) and 3,000 rubles ($110). The average size of a bribe is 5,048 rubles ($185), and one respondent said he had to give a bribe of 75,000 rubles ($2,730).
"Our poll did not cover the groups that have a decisive influence on the nation's finances, because a bribe given by a billionaire would greatly distort the average size of bribes," Golov said.
Surveys conducted held by other sociological groups confirm the mass nature of graft in Russia. Igor Eidman, director of foreign relations at the Russian opinion research center VTsIOM, said a poll conducted late last year showed that only 20% of the respondents with school-age children did not make any "unofficial" payments in their kids' schools.
The people do not believe the state can defeat corruption. The latest VTsIOM poll showed that only 30% saw recent achievements in this effort, while 44% said the situation had not changed and 21% said corruption was proliferating.
Leonid Troshin, executive director of the Social Movement Against Corruption, said the sociologists' data was reliable. "We receive lots of complaints from the people about corrupt officials every day," he said. "Law-enforcement agencies are not working well enough, with few cases they open reaching courts."
