Berlusconi Postpones Visit After Earthquake

06 April 2009 - Moscow Times - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has postponed a visit to Moscow after an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude shook central Italy early Monday morning, leaving more than 20 dead and thousands injured. Berlusconi declared a state of emergency and has not announced a new date for the visit, the Italian Embassy in Moscow said. A group of businessmen were to accompany him for an Italian-Russian economic forum. The visit was expected to be capped with a signing ceremony Tuesday between Gazprom and Eni, Italy's biggest oil and gas group. The two companies agreed last month that Gazprom would buy a 20 percent stake in its oil arm that Eni won in an auction in April 2007. Eni could become the outright owner of the Gazprom Neft shares if Thursday's deadline for the buyback passes. Gazprom may also acquire from Eni and its partner Enel a 51 percent stake in Siberian gas assets won at the same auction.

Russian Orthodox Church a growing political force

04-05-2009 - MOSCOW (AP by Mansur Mirovalef) — The glittering Christ the Savior Cathedral, a pale-white marble structure decorated with bronze statuary and swaths of gold leaf, is more than just Moscow's grandest and most opulent place of worship. Built in the 1990s as a replica of a church dynamited by Communists in 1931, the cathedral symbolizes the Moscow Patriarchate's rising political influence — which may be greater today than at any time since the 17th century. It also serves as global headquarters of vast and expanding business operations that experts say are worth several billion dollars. To tens of millions of Russian believers, the Orthodox Church is first of all a sacred institution, a pillar of the country's 1,000-year-old identity and culture. The death of Patriarch Alexy II in December caused an outpouring of heartfelt grief, with crowds of people lining up to view his remains. On Feb. 1, top clerics enthroned Alexy's successor, Kirill — a towering figure with a gray-flecked beard and sonorous voice — in a cathedral filled with celebrities and political leaders. The first person to receive communion from Patriarch Kirill was President Dmitry Medvedev's wife, Svetlana. These events would have been unimaginable in the Soviet era, when the officially atheist Communist government treated the devout like moral lepers and criminals, defrocking and imprisoning tens of thousands of clerics of all creeds. Now the church "has become a serious power in society," former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told The Associated Press in early March. But critics claim that in the past decade the Moscow Patriarchate has sacrificed some of its spiritual authority in the pursuit of political power and commercial success. Some go as far as to compare the church to its former nemesis, the Communist Party's ruling Politburo. Roman Lunkin of the Keston Institute, which studies religion in the former Soviet Union, says the church has "turned into an authoritarian and totalitarian structure." A priest who condemned the 2005 conviction and imprisonment of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a leading foe of then-President Vladimir Putin, was defrocked and appointed to guard a church store in 2006. Orthodox leaders said the decision was not political, but had to do with the priest's "discipline." Bishop Diomid of Chukotka, who lambasted Alexy II's alleged subservience to the Kremlin, found himself demoted to the rank of a monk last year. The church accused Diomid's supporters of planning to seize power in the Patriarchate. A church council excommunicated Gleb Yakunin, a priest and former lawmaker, in 1997 after he headed a government commission that concluded that most top clerics, including Patriarch Alexy and his future successor Kirill, were KGB informers. The church has long denied these claims as "absolutely unsubstantiated" and said top clerics had to "communicate" with the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, which forwarded their reports to the KGB. The church also claimed Yakunin worked for U.S. intelligence. "Unfortunately, Orthodox Christianity is antidemocratic and hails authoritarian rule," said Yakunin, who spent years in the gulag for criticizing Soviet religious policies, during an interview in his Moscow office. Today, the 74-year-old priest leads the Apostolic Orthodox Church, a splinter group that is harassed by authorities in Russia and Belarus. Despite the Russian constitution's legal separation of church and state, President Boris Yeltsin and his successor Vladimir Putin forged a political alliance with the Orthodox Church — an alliance that has continued under Putin's successor, Medvedev. Kirill is escorted around Moscow by a cavalcade of Kremlin security guards and was listed No. 6 on the government's list of state dignitaries. Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst with close Kremlin ties, says the church has become "the Kremlin's Ministry for the Salvation of Souls." Church leaders have blessed Kremlin plans to eliminate some social benefits for the elderly, called on Russia's youth to volunteer for military service in Chechnya and consecrated new warships and nuclear missiles, calling the latter "Russia's guardian angels." The church has also supported the Kremlin's official ideology, which asserts that Russia's unique historic role makes it unsuited for Western-style liberal democracy. "The church is trying to offer a new anti-European Utopia," prominent writer Viktor Yerofeyev complained in a December article in the French newspaper Le Monde. "Its main principle: Russian values are different from Western values." For the church, political loyalty has paid handsomely. The State Duma, or lower house of parliament, is considering a bill to return to the church up to 7.41 million acres nationalized after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Both federal and local authorities have granted the church donations, tax breaks and broad immunity from government regulation of its businesses. Moscow officials, in particular, have helped the church raise money for favored causes — such as rebuilding the Christ the Savior Cathedral — by pressuring private business to contribute. The cathedral itself reflects a dual focus on the spiritual and commercial. The structure has a dry cleaner, ATM machines, meeting halls for rent and convenient underground parking. According to Nikolai Mitrokhin, director of a research institute that studies religions in the former Soviet Union, the church built its fortune starting in the 1990s through trade in tobacco and alcohol, through exports of oil and sturgeon, by the construction of shopping malls and hotels and by operating jewelry stores — allegedly with counterfeit bling. The church also runs book publishing concerns and organic farms. A church spokesman, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, confirmed that the Patriarchate controlled many businesses. But Chaplin said neither the tobacco nor the oil business proved profitable, and claimed the church is no longer involved in them. He also dismissed the notion that the church's commercial deals had undermined its spiritual mission. "I don't see anything detrimental if the church can invest in this kind of work," he told AP. The Patriarchate does not make its financial reports public, but Mitrokhin estimates the Orthodox Church's annual income at several billion dollars. This secrecy has led to allegations — denied by the church — that it has engaged in money laundering. "All of their financial streams flow in the dark," said Sergei Filatov, a scholar of religion at Moscow State University. Today, the church says nearly half of its income comes from the four-star hotel in the Danilovsky Monastery, a short walk from the Kremlin, and a factory outside the capital that produces icons and other religious items. The church sells religious goods in places like the golden-domed Holy Trinity monasterial complex in Sergiyev Posad, 100 miles northwest of Moscow, where on a recent day pilgrims lined up in the cold to kiss the sarcophagus of St. Sergius, one of Russia's patron saints. Many of the pilgrims stopped by some of the dozen shops peddling icons, calendars and refrigerator magnets, or pricier goods such as jewelry with images of Jesus or the saints. Some Sergiyev Posad residents grumbled about the commercial atmosphere. "It's like a supermarket," said Alexander Bekker, 38, a martial arts instructor and a devout believer. "What spirituality are you talking about among these merchants?" Other believers say that the church's affluence has helped spread the gospel, aid the needy and restore thousands of churches and monasteries destroyed or desecrated during Communist rule. "We still have to rebuild what Communist iconoclasts destroyed," said Father Vitaly, 51, a priest from the central city of Vladimir. "Funds won't fly down from the sky." Top church officials may live amid pomp and splendor. But many priests scrape by selling candles and souvenirs, charging modest fees for performing wedding and funeral ceremonies and blessing new houses, offices or cars. "We trust in God, but rely on ourselves," said Father Alexander, a smiling 37-year-old priest, who consecrated a new office in downtown Moscow for $140. Some experts say that the Orthodox-led religious revival has made Russia's post-Soviet political leadership a kinder, gentler group than their Communist Party predecessors. "In Communist times, authorities completely lacked human, moral principles," said church historian Andrei Zubov, of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. "Now that many politicians are religious, they relate their lives to moral principles."

Russia, U.S. seek fresh start toward better ties

April 2, 2009-04-03 by Xinhua writer Yu Maofeng  – MOSCOW, In the latest effort to reset strained ties, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama held their first face-to-face meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in London. Without a breakthrough agreement in place, the leaders pledged in a joint statement to negotiate a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by the end of the year. A new treaty on strategic offensive weapons, though of limited significance in overall Russian-U.S. relations, will create a favorable climate for mending their relations, analysts said.
CHARTING FRESH START IN RELATIONS: The much-anticipated meeting was seen as a historic opportunity for the presidents to build a better Russian-U.S. relationship. "We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between our two countries," Medvedev and Obama said in a joint statement after their meeting. Nevertheless, expectations are low for much immediate progress on disputes between the White House and the Kremlin, as the presidents were meeting on the eve of the G20 summit, which focuses on the global economic downturn. But an agreement to negotiate a new deal on cutting nuclear warheads raised hopes that the two countries are on track toward a better relationship. The two countries will "begin bilateral intergovernmental negotiations to work out a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms to replace the START treaty," the statement said. The leaders have instructed negotiators to report their first results on the new agreement by July, when Obama visits Moscow. The START I, signed in 1991 between the United States and the former Soviet Union, places a limit of 6,000 strategic or long-range nuclear warheads on each side and allows the inspection of weapons. The subsequent 2002 treaty signed in Moscow called for reducing nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012, but made no provision for verification. If START expires in December without a follow-up, the Moscow treaty would be left with no legally binding system for verification. It is estimated that the United States currently has at least 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed and Russia between 2,000and 3,000. The joint statement of Medvedev and Obama said the new treaty would set lower limits for strategic weapons than the 2002 treaty. Both sides could agree on cutting their nuclear warheads to 1,300-1,500 under the new treaty, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin, a senior fellow with the International Security Center at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said. However, a number of stumbling blocks remain on concluding such a treaty. "Among them, the major one is the coordination of principles on the accounting of warheads, because there has been a lot of disputes on this issue over the years," Dvorkin was quoted by Interfax as saying. During their meeting, the two presidents also "agreed to work toward and support a coordinated international response with the UN playing a key role" on Afghanistan, according to the joint statement. As for Iran, they said they would continue to work on a comprehensive diplomatic solution.
END OF OLD ERA: Russian-U.S. relations have sunk to a post-Cold War low amid an array of rows, including Washington's missile defense plan in Eastern Europe, Russia's brief war with Georgia last August and NATO's eastward expansion. In their joint statement, Obama and Medvedev declared that the "era when our countries viewed each other as enemies is long over." Obama reiterated that the United States wants to "press the reset button," as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden put it at a Munich conference in February. Analysts said Washington is seeking to improve relations with Moscow because the Bush administration's policies on Russia have not produced the desired results, but only aggregated tensions between the two countries. Normal relations with Russia will most likely allow the United States to settle more easily many of its problems, such as Afghanistan and possibly Iran, media observers said. Russia shares a common ground with the U.S. on some security issues as the Taliban and al-Qaida are the common foes of both countries, Alexander Shumilin, an expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said. He said Moscow also hopes the improvement of political ties between the two countries could directly boost exchanges in economy, trade, and scientific technology, needed to overcome the financial crisis. Medvedev and Obama acknowledged that differences remain over the planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe, saying they "discussed new possibilities for mutual international cooperation in the field." They were also at adds over the Caucasus but agreed to work on them jointly. NATO's further eastern expansion toward Georgia and Ukraine remains a dangerous trigger for fresh conflicts as Obama has not changed the course of the Bush administration on this issue. Analysts said it will not be easy for the two countries, whose interests and perspectives differ significantly, to build strong relations any time soon. Still, the negotiations about a new arms treaty were "an excellent first step," Sam Greene, deputy head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, was quoted as saying by The Moscow Times newspaper. The nascent thaw in Russian-U.S. relations may still fall short of expectations, but the process that started in London is likely to continue, analysts said.

Time to settle the “flying saucers” question

1 April 2009 - MOSCOW - (Andrei Kislyakov, for RIA Novosti) - So do UFOs with little green men inside exist or not? CNN supposedly filmed a UFO moving at a great speed from the right to the left during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. (But those who watched the replay say it was a bird.) After that, former President Clinton's White House Chief John Podesta, now one of Obama's closest associates, demanded that the thick UFO files be made public. The number of UFO sightings has dramatically increased in recent times. According to Britain's Ministry of Defense, there were supposedly 285 UFO sightings in the UK in 2008, double the figure for 2007, when the number of alleged UFO sightings was reckoned at 137. (UFOs attacking Ukraine. Video UFO seen over Moscow during Russia - Netherlands match. Video) The defense departments of the United States and the Soviet Union scrupulously registered alleged sightings of UFOs for decades. American ufologists say that the U.S. authorities were quite serious about the UFO question in the 1940s through 1960s. Project Blue Book, terminated in 1969, had two goals: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data. The USAF concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security. Paradoxically, the military still refuse to provide information about UFOs for security reasons. Ufologists insist that the USAF must give them access to certain documents, such as Project Moon Dust and Project Blue Fly. Project Moon Dust was started in 1953, ostensibly to recover "returning space debris." Operation Blue Fly was launched to facilitate expeditious delivery to Foreign Technology Division of moon dust and other items of great technological intelligence interest. It is assumed that they were in fact connected with UFOs. According to ufologists, the U.S. military also have kept the bodies of extraterrestrials who died in spaceship crashes over the United States. The most widely known of such episodes, the Roswell Incident, took place in New Mexico on July 2, 1947, when an object crash-landed on a ranch approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell, leaving a large field of debris. The local air base at Roswell investigated the incident and announced that they had recovered a "flying disk." In fact, the crash was seen by a number of people. There were allegedly alien bodies found in the disk, but the film showing their autopsy was later denounced as a fraud. If UFOs existed and military units were investigating them, there should also be a place for their deployment. This is Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, a secret military facility about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. At the center of it there is a large air base the government will not discuss about. The Roswell story speaks of alien bodies and wreckage being taken to a "Hangar 18" in Area 51. Space photographs of the area show a huge landing strip crisscrossing the area and strange circles that can be interpreted as traces of landing of huge "flying saucers." Ufologists are convinced that this is so. As President, George W. Bush moved Area 51 from the Nevada jurisdiction to that of the Pentagon and Washington. Slightly more than 10 years ago, civilian aircraft were prohibited to fly over the area. The archives of the former Soviet Union are filled to capacity with data about contacts with extraterrestrials. They contain records of over 20,000 UFO sightings. The Academy of Sciences and the Defense Ministry both undertook investigations under the secret project names of Setka, Galaktika and Gorizont. It is even said that "competent agencies," meaning the secret services, established contact with aliens and waited for their arrival to Earth. The media is now writing about a team of General Staff officers and academicians waiting for the arrival of an UFO in the Kyzylkum desert in June 1991. Clearly, humans will always strive to search for beings of humanoid form in the Universe. But it is also apparent that apart from tall tales about "little green men" there are also facts that logically point to the presence of alien intelligence on the Earth. In this case, maybe the time has come for the U.S. and Russian authorities to declassify information on unidentified flying objects and their masters?