MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) Russia wants to protect its war graves in "problem" countries/ Russian-Estonian "war of monuments" affects international business/ Gazprom to buy Yukos stake in Transpetrol/ Russian-Chinese military-technical cooperation loses much of its potential/ Russian ombudsman tells the West what worries Russians
Kommersant
Russia wants to protect its war graves in "problem" countries
Russia will spend about $1 million annually to open seven foreign missions to monitor and maintain war graves, primarily in such "problem" countries as Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states.
Experts said the presidential decree, which is to be signed before the end of May, would demonstrate to the West that Russia will not permit a repetition of the Bronze Soldier scandal in Estonia.
Alexander Kirilin, head of the Military Memorial Center of the Russian Armed Forces, who will coordinate the work of the missions, said the project covers 14 countries where some 95% of Soviet WWII graves are located. According to the center's information some 9 million Soviet people are buried outside Russia.
The Russian authorities are trying to avoid presenting this as a political project.
Mikhail Margelov, head of the upper house's committee for international affairs, said it was not a short-lived "campaign": "Efforts to systematize historical graves have been the responsibility of different departments, and this should become more effective if we turn the task over to one agency."
A Kremlin source said: "The work on the project began more than a year ago. On January 22, 2006, the president said he wanted to hear proposals to preserve the memory of the fallen. But the Estonian scandal has forced him to act quicker than planned."
Konstantin Zatulin, director of the Institute of the CIS and deputy of the lower house of parliament, said the decree was a vivid demonstration of political will: "This is a signal showing that we are prepared to prevent a repetition of the Estonian incident, and to guarantee that nothing untoward happens to the war graves."
Zatulin also said that as Putin had not publicly expressed his view of the Bronze Soldier scandal, and so the decree "could be viewed as a kind of compensation for that."
Political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, said the missions would not solve the problem: "We do not need missions to take care of war memorials and graves, as the embassies and friendship societies can easily cope with this task. As for official Russian reaction (or lack of it) to its neighbors' actions, it depends solely on Russia's business interests in these countries. Russia has business interests in Estonia, which is why the reaction [to the Estonian authorities' decision to dismantle the Bronze Soldier memorial] was not very harsh."
Gazeta
Russian-Estonian "war of monuments" affects international business
It seems Estonia has found an economic response to Russia's unofficial sanctions. After Russian Railways (RZD) rail monopoly suspended Russian oil shipments, Estonia has displayed an intransigent attitude to the construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline on the Baltic Sea bed.
On May 5, 2007, it became known that Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip refused to meet with Gerhard Schroeder, chairman of Nord Stream's board of directors. The main reason behind the refusal were recent statements made by the former German chancellor to the effect that the removal of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn and exhumation of the soldiers' remains could be regarded as an insult to Russians who fought against fascism.
It was expected that on May 8 Andrus Ansip and Gerhard Schroeder would discuss, among other things, possibilities for transferring the Nord Stream route from the Finnish maritime economic zone to the Estonian one, where the sea bed is more even and deeper.
Recently Estonia refused to give Russia permission for exploration work in its waters under the pretext that the application had not been properly drawn up. It will take about four months to redraft the documents and to examine them again. This means that the summer period, which is most suitable for exploration work, will be missed.
In addition, the Estonian authorities have again expressed their ecological concerns about the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream is still regarded as the main threat to the environment in the Baltic Sea area. Juhan Parts, Estonia's minister of economic affairs and communications, believes that it is necessary to assess alternative routes, including a land pipeline, and that representatives of all EU countries should analyze the project.
Estonia's stubbornness in the matter of the underwater gas pipeline has already cost over $400 million to the country's budget (about 3% of the country's GDP). Since 2005, gas prices for Estonia have nearly trebled: from $90 to $260 per 1,000 cu m. Germany pays as much for twice the distance. However, if Estonia does not meet Gazprom and its Nord Stream partners halfway, it will incur losses.
Vedomosti
Gazprom to buy Yukos stake in Transpetrol
On Friday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov met his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico and said the embattled oil giant Yukos' stake in Slovakia's pipeline operator Transpetrol would be sold in the interests of both countries.
The government of Slovakia will buy a 49% stake in Transpetrol, subsequently reselling it to Russia's state-controlled energy giant Gazprom, the paper's sources said.
In 2002, Yukos bought a stake in Transpetrol for $74 million from the Slovak government.
Yukos Finance BV, a Dutch subsidiary of Yukos, managed its last most expensive foreign asset.
In February 2006, Yukos agreed to sell the shares of Russian oil company Russneft for $103 million; but the Slovak government opposed the deal.
In August 2006, Slovakia's Economics Minister Lubomir Jahnatek and Yukos Finance directors Bruce Misamore and David Godfrey agreed that the Slovak government would buy Transpetrol shares.
Eduard Rebgun, Yukos's court-appointed receiver, subsequently dismissed Misamore and Godfrey, who managed to transfer the share package to the Dutch trust fund Stichting Administratiekanto, which they control.
Yukos Finance is therefore unable to manage the Transpetrol stake. Claire Davidson, a spokesperson for Yukos International, which is affiliated with Yukos Finance, said the shares are still managed by the Dutch trust.
Former deputy Yukos board chairman Alexander Temerko and a source close to the Yukos Finance management said Yukos's Transpetrol stake could be sold to the Slovak government and resold to Gazprom.
Temerko, who is living in London, said Yukos Finance managers had initially asked their Slovak partners to sell the shares at a tender. But the national government decided to sell its stake to Gazprom directly in exchange for guaranteed hydrocarbon supplies.
A former Yukos manager said the stake could have been sold for 110-120 million euros.
Press services of the Slovak government and Economics Ministry, as well as Gazprom and Gazprom Neft spokespersons, declined to comment.
Previously, a spokesperson for the Slovak Economics Ministry said the government wants to buy Yukos's Transpetrol stake and to resell it to a strategic partner from Russia.
Kommersant
Russian-Chinese military-technical cooperation loses much of its potential
The Russian-Chinese commission for military-technical cooperation has postponed its regular meeting from May till fall. Moscow explained the decision as being due to a reshuffle involving the commission's top officials, while Beijing said existing contracts should be streamlined.
However, it appears that bilateral military-technical cooperation has lost much of its potential.
Throughout the 1990s, Russian defense factories managed to survive on Chinese contracts.
In 1992-2006, Russia exported weapons worth $58.4 billion, with China receiving $26 billion of the total.
But the situation has now changed. Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said Moscow is now exporting its weapons to many other regions and has no particular need for China as a customer.
Last year and early this year Russia signed major package agreements with Algeria ($7.5 billion), Venezuela ($3 billion), and India ($2.6 billion). Contracts with Libya (up to $2.2 billion) and Syria ($2-3 billion) are in the pipeline.
Andrei Karneyev, deputy director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University, said the Russian defense industry had mostly supplied Soviet-era weapons to China.
He said Beijing now wants to buy more advanced weaponry from Russia, which will not include missile technologies in the cooperation sphere for obvious reasons.
Alexander Lukin, director of the Center of Asian Studies and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), said Moscow had repeatedly armed China in the past.
He said such weapons had been used against Soviet border guards in the 1960s.
"This does not mean that the situation will be repeated; but Russia, which is somewhat apprehensive of China, does not want to sell state-of-the-art weapons to it," Lukin told the paper.
However, Russia and China are unlikely to terminate their military-technical cooperation.
Karneyev said China would receive components to previously supplied systems for a long time to come.
Nor is Beijing ready for this because it still faces an arms embargo from the United States and the European Union.
Israel, too, has yielded to pressure from Washington and stopped selling up-to-date weaponry to China.
Vremya Novostei
Russian ombudsman tells the West what worries Russians
Instead of pinpointing problems with human rights in Russia, human rights commissioner Vladimir Lukin has held a remote dialogue with the U.S. State Department and his foreign colleagues during Friday's meeting of the upper house of Russia's parliament.
He told foreign critics, for the umpteenth time, that the most important rights for Russians are the rights to a stable pension, quality health care, and warmth in their homes.
In its report on the situation with human rights in Russia delivered in Congress in March 2007, the State Department said: "Continuing centralization of power in the executive branch, (...) political pressure on the judiciary, (...) continuing media restrictions and self-censorship, and harassment of some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) resulted in an erosion of the accountability of government leaders to the population."
However, according to Lukin, Russians are less worried about radical opposition or NGOs. The biggest problem affecting human rights in this country is insufficient social insurance and "a deep divide between poverty and shameless wealth."
The overwhelming majority of complaints (46%) to the human rights department concern violations of social and economic rights, and the second-largest problem is corruption in law-enforcement agencies and among state officials.
"The people wonder why the law on corruption has not been passed yet," Lukin said.
The Russian human rights community considers Lukin's report balanced and objective, considering his place in the vertical structure of power.
Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, said: "Lukin knows the sensitive issues. I usually talk about the same problems, the only difference being that I do this much more harshly."
Alexander Brod, director of the non-profit Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, said: "Lukin did not speak harshly because he, being a state official, may not go beyond certain limits. He did not criticize the legislative and executive authorities, but he did describe the symptoms of the disease: problems in the judiciary, facts of corruption, and elements of xenophobia."
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