RBTH for DT #9

Comment & Analysis

Syria: decision time

RBTH puts CNN’s foreign affairs expert Fareed Zakaria on the spot

RBTH for iPad For each metropolis there is an off-the-beaten-track village.

For each bottle of vodka there is a glass of kvas.

For each Gazprom there is a new startup.

P.05

Sport

Crying foul over cash Football clubs discover the ugly financial reality of the beautiful game

P.08

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

For each of you there is a Russia of your choice.

This eight-page pull-out is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the contents

Distributed with

DRAWING THE SYRIAN POISON GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

Burning issues: a free Syrian Army fighter in the eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus

I

Reporting from last week’s Valdai Club meeting as part of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s press retinue, Yevgeny Shestakov canvasses expert Russian opinion – both on and off the record – on the nation’s hopes and fears for a Syrian settlement

AN ADULT DISCUSSION

Another principal agreement, according to sources close to the Russian-American talks, was that the American side would refrain from making further threats against the president of Syria, so that he could fulfil his obligations. But apparently Washington interpreted the Geneva talks between Mr Lavrov and Mr Kerry differently. In addition to the resolution approving a military strike on Syria, the US announced plans to transfer the case of Bashar al-Assad to the International Criminal Court and began collecting evidence of crimes against humanity. Thus, according to the Kremlin, political forces in Washington are set on a course to break down the Geneva agreements reached by Mr Lavrov and Mr Kerry, or to revise them to their advantage.

According to sources close to the negotiations, as a compromise Russia can add to the Security Council resolution its willingness to examine any violations Damascus makes of the plan for the destruction of chemical weapons. But the issue will be discussed only in subsequent resolutions.

After his appointment as Secretary of State, John Kerry invited Sergey Lavrov to “act like adults” in one of the first meetings with his Russian counterpart. The agreement between Russia and the United States to destroy the Syrian chemical weapons is, in fact, the first example of how the two countries can solve the most pressing international issues. But according to sources close to the Russian diplomatic missions, the document agreed upon by Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov, which presented a road map for destroying Bashar al-Assad’s chemical stockpiles, was later distorted.

Contrary to the agreement, the representatives of France, Britain and the United States submitted a draft resolution to the Security Council on Syria that contained, besides the plan for the destruction of chemical weapons, references to a United Nations article that permits the use of military force against Damascus. According to the authors of the resolution, if the Assad regime violates any of its commitments, a strike could be justified.

According to sources close to the Kremlin, nothing like that was discussed when Mr Lavrov and Mr Kerry met. Moscow is pushing for its western partners to stick to the plan that was previously agreed.

It called for Syria to join the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and, on the basis of recommendations from this organisation, for the UN Security Council to adopt resolutions without reference to possible sanctions against Damascus. If Syria does not fulfil its promises, Moscow proposes adopting another resolution that would authorise sanctions against the Assad regime. Thus, as they say, the Russian Foreign Ministry proposes to “separate the wheat from the chaff”.

NO PLAN B

Does Russia have a “Plan B” in the event that the Assad regime does not fulfil its obligations? According to sources close to the Kremlin, it does not. Moscow believes that the Syrian side will not break its promises if the West sticks to the plan agreed to by Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov in Geneva. At the same time, Moscow is not sure that Washington and its allies will refrain from using force to overthrow the Syrian regime, even if Damascus destroys its chemical weapons, especially since the White House once again called the Assad regime illegitimate and has said it does not want to see Assad in power in the future Syria.

AP

t is beginning to look unrealistic to expect the UN Security Council to accept a resolution on Syria before the end of September as US Secretary of State John Kerry has called upon it to do. The forthcoming meeting of the Russian and US foreign ministers at the UN General Assembly, which will convene this week in New York, will not smooth over the differences that have again emerged between the White House and the Kremlin. According to sources close to the Russian presidential administration, Moscow believes that it was lied to.

According to preliminary estimates, the operation will cost more than a billion dollars and will take at least a year

Who will destroy the chemical weapons and where will they do it? Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu made it clear that Russia may join the international coalition that will take on this task. But this does not mean that Moscow will do it alone. According to Kommersant, the military is holding consultations “regarding the size of the contingent”, which should be sent to Syria. It is assumed that the group will include radiation, chemical and biological safety experts from the Russian armed forces. It is also possible that a special forces unit will be sent to the site of the operation.

The parties have agreed that soldiers from Russia, the US and several European countries (possibly France and Britain) will be involved in securing the perimeter of the area where the work will be carried out. Their participation in the operation may reduce the risk that the Syrian opposition could provoke an attack. However, the issue of ensuring the safety of the personnel engaged in the operation on the battlefield remains key. There may end up being as many as 10,000 people from different countries involved in the destruction of the chemical weapons.

TIME AND MONEY

According to preliminary estimates, the operation will cost more than $1bn (£624,000m) and will take at least a year. But the time needed, experts say, depends on many factors. Syria’s internal conflict may significantly increase the costs associated with the removal of toxic substances and the time needed to complete it.

The director general of the OPCW, Ahmet Üzümcü, said that the founding document of the organisation will come into force for Syria on October 14.

The country will become the 190th member state of

the organisation. This means that Syria must provide a complete inventory of its chemical weapons, production equipment, and related materials as soon as possible.

WHO LAUNCHED THE GAS ATTACK?

America continues to insist that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical attack on a Damascus suburb that killed anywhere from 500 to 1,400 people on August 21. According to Washington, the report of the UN inspectors confirmed the guilt of the Syrian regime. In turn, Damascus handed evidence to the UN that it said showed the crime was committed by the rebels. According to sources close to the Kremlin, the document presents data showing the missiles were equipped with homemade weapons.

Briefly, the evidence is as follows: first, the regular Syrian army does not have the type of rockets found at the scene of the chemical attack. They were manufactured in the Sixties in the Soviet Union and at that time were sold to about 50 different countries.

Second, Russia never gave Syria warheads with chemical agents. The rockets fired did not have a guidance system or the so-called precursor that conventional Soviet missiles were equipped with. Third, hand-made sarin cylinders were found in the area of the chemical attack. Fourth, according to intelligence services, the area from which, according to the Americans, the rockets were fired was not fully controlled by forces loyal to Assad.

Finally, another little-known fact: in March several people were detained by the Syrian military in possession of a cylinder of sarin at the Turkish-Syrian border. However, the UN did not investigate the incident, despite requests from Damascus. According to Russian intelligence services, about 75pc of the groups fighting in Syria against the Assad regime are directly or indirectly related to al-Qaeda; some are on the American list of terrorist organisations.

OVERLAPPING INTERESTS

What steps will Russia and the United States take, if it is proved that Damascus didn’t order the chemical attack? To my knowledge, Lavrov and Kerry did not discuss this issue at their meeting in Geneva, since the official version of the events will not allow either CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Politics & Society P2_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_www.rbth.co.uk

Battle of the sexes Women are striving to make an impact on politics in Russia, long seen as a patriarchal society. But a few role models have blazed a trail by reaching high positions

THE QUOTES

YAROSLAVA KIRYUKHINA AP

RBTH

" © ALEXEY DANICHEV / RIA NOVOSTI

I don’t know if the male-female ratio should be defined by law. It’s important to appoint the most suitable person, based on their personal and professional qualities. However, there's definitely a lack of women politicians in the government."

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN

British film director Peter Greenaway will open the Russia–UK cross-cultural year in Moscow in 2014 with a video installation, The Golden Age of Russian Art. The Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres will represent Russia in the UK. A tour by Britain’s National Theatre and an exhibition by the suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich organised by Tate Gallery are also planned.

ITAR-TASS

1

2

3

4

Breaking through: 1) Valentina Matvienko, head of Russia’s Federation Council; 2) Olga Golodets, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs; 3) Valentina Tereshkova, Member of Parliament and Russia’s first female cosmonaut; 4) Alina Kabayeva, Member of Parliament and former Olympic gymnastics gold medallist

The For Women of Russia Party positions itself as non-feminist; it wants the ‘restoration of family values’

Women of Russia Party emerged, and initially had some electoral success. It won 8.1pc of the vote and a total of 23 seats in the 1993 elections. However, the party is no longer a force in Russian politics.

Last year, the Justice Ministry registered the new For Women of Russia Party. But the group positions itself as non-feminist, instead promoting equal gender participation. The party has about 100,000 members and promotes the “restoration of family values”.

The western feminist movement bypassed Soviet women and feminism has failed to gain much traction even in modern Russia. There have, however, been calls for the implementation of quotas for women politicians, and deputy Elena Mizulina is one prominent figure who promotes the idea.

Ms Kryshtanovskaya, however, does not believe in positive discrimination for women. She says that electoral rules should be equal for all, and adds, somewhat ironically: “Russian men are dying out at a rapid pace.”

In 2011, Russia’s then-minister for health, Tatyana Golikova, announced at a meeting with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, that Russia was preparing a gender equality bill.

“Russia doesn’t have any gender equality legislation and, as yet, we don’t have any real mechanisms to eliminate gender discrimination,” she said. However, adoption of the bill was put on hold; a similar bill was approved by the State Duma in 2003, but blocked by the executive branch.

Female politicians in Russia, as in many other countries, are subject to sexist coverage in the mainstream media and blogosphere. Undermining them by ridiculing or unduly focusing on their appearance and making allegations about their sexual relationships with male politicians is common. The former gymnastics star Alina Kabayeva is a case in point; when she was elected to the Duma, she was linked in the tabloids to Mr Putin himself, a rumour that continues to dog her despite constant denials.

ALEXANDRA GUZEVA RBTH

It is very hard to prove that torrent users are acting as ‘pirates’: they can download content for their own use without any economic benefit

Ticket to ride in comfort Russia’s first doubledeck, long-distance passenger train begins operating this autumn.

The train will run regularly between Moscow and Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Passengers will find a host of modern features on board, including three bio-toilets, WiFi, and air-conditioning.

The service also provides wheelchair access for disabled passengers and the dining car has two lifts for taking food to the second floor.

Ticket prices start at 3,206 roubles (£63), compared to 4,530 (£89) for single-deck trains. The train number is 104/103; tickets can be bought at the Russian Railways website.

Kazan to host summit The city of Kazan will hold the Fifth International Economic Summit of Russia and OIC countries from October 2-3. Representatives of the Russian government and foreign countries, heads of Russian regions, international investors, industrialists and the global business community are expected to attend. www.kazansummit.com/eng

THE NUMBERS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Moscow or Washington to retreat in the future. So, what does the immediate future hold for Syria?

There is no consensus in the Russian expert community or in the administration. In his conversation with me, the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Vitaly Naumkin, proposed that, when assessing the future of Syria, researchers should abandon the traditional approach and look at how the interests of the major geopolitical players overlap.

The Currently, the interests of Russia and the West amount overlap much more than they conflict. The parthe soties both favour the destruction of weapons of cial network VKontakmass destruction in Syria, assisting Syrian refte must pay for illegally ugees and taking on the radicals. As for the providing access to 11 possible scenarios, according to Professor Alexsongs by singer Maksim ei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, there could be at least three outcomes. They include the situation of a strike on Syria with out of 10 or without a UN Security Council resolution, books are in the event that Assad deceives the internadownloaded tional community to hang on to power until free in Russia. The the next elections in Syria. All agree that it is Read Legally project very difficult to predict how the situation will fights piracy develop. One thing my sources are very sure about is that “Syria will not fall apart. No one is interested in seeing this.”

MULTIMEDIA Speaking at the closing session of the Valdai Club, which brings together 200 experts from more than 30 countries, Sergei Ivanov, head of the Russian presidential administration, joked that the Cold War was a haven for political scientists, because everything in the world was clear and events not so hard to predict. Today, said Mr Ivanov, it was impossible to predict what would happen in the world tomorrow.

Scan this code to read For Russia and the West, the events in Syria more about copyright are a clear example of how unpredictable inand piracy in Russia ternational relations have become. But at the same time, the response to the crisis demonstrates that Moscow and Washington are able to put together a concerted initiative to resolve READ MORE at www.rbth.co.uk/ world conflicts when both parties respect the rules of “fair play”.

27075

11pc

of Russians who download free movies are ready to pay for content; 36pc say they will find a way to get round a ban

£10

ITAR-TASS

Copyright law After the original draft was met with hostility among bloggers and internet advocates, a revised bill to toughen up Russia’s internet piracy laws has passed its first stage

A woman, regardless of her status or qualities, will always be subject to mistrust. For 13 years, I spent 70pc of my time and energy proving that I’m a politician with equal rights to men; I only had 30pc left to actually pass laws."

2004 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IRINA KHAKAMADA

ITAR-TASS

PHOTOSHOT/VOSTOCK-PHOTO

ITAR-TASS

"

Duma plots course to thwart pirates

A draft bill to fight internet piracy has moved forward in the Duma after an earlier, more punitive version provoked a storm of criticism. The original bill by the Ministry of Culture stated that users as well as owners of illegal content would be punishable by law and that internet resources in contravention of the law would be blocked extrajudicially. The ministry was forced to drop these clauses, however, after failing to gain support from the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media.

The Duma’s latest proposals give site owners and hosting providers 24 hours to close access to information after receiving a request from copyright holders. Individuals face fines of at least 5,000 roubles (£97) for failing to comply, while legal entities may have to pay up to 1 million roubles (£19,480). Only the URL and not the IP address would be closed down.

Russia is increasing its efforts to build nuclear power stations in Britain. The UK’s Energy Ministry has signed a memorandum of understanding with nuclear agency Rosatom to assess if Russian reactor technology could be introduced to the UK market.

Rosatom said it had agreed to partner with Finnish utility Fortum and Britain’s Rolls-Royce to seek approval to sell its VVER nuclear reactor in Britain with the intention of building one there. It said in a statement: “The parties consider the UK energy market to be an attractive opportunity, as most of the operating UK nuclear power plant fleet is planned to be decommissioned in the medium term.”

Greenaway’s video opener

OLEG PRASOLOV / RG

Women make up less than 14pc of deputies in the State Duma, with 61 seats out of 450. In comparison, there were 143 women elected to the British House of Commons in the 2010 general election out of 650, 22pc of MPs. According to this year’s data from the InterParliamentary Union (IPU), Russia was one of the lowest-ranked countries – at 98, just ahead of Guatemala and Romania – in terms of women’s participation in politics and decision-making processes.

As well as being small in number, Russia’s women politicians are not seen as having a lot of influence, and none of them were listed in the Forbes ranking of the world’s most powerful women.

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, an expert on the Russian political elite and former member of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, says the patriarchal nature of Russian society is to blame for the low levels of women’s political participation. She says some high-profile male politicians have only “let in” women politicians who do not have their own opinions, who look good and are essentially puppets of more powerful men.

However, Ms Kryshtanovskaya believes that strong and independent-minded female leaders are starting to emerge in Russia. One recent example is Elvira Nabiullina, former minister for economic development, who this year was promoted by President Putin to lead Russia’s Central Bank. Still only 49, Ms Nabiullina stands out internationally as the first woman to head a Group of Eight financial body.

The Russian Federation has never had a female prime minister or president, but it’s not out of the question, according to Ms Kryshtanovskaya, who believes that Valentina Matvienko may be a contender.

The former governor of Russia’s “second capital”,St Petersburg, Ms Matvienko now chairs the Federation Council – the upper house of the Russian Parliament. This makes her the third highest-ranking politician in the country after Mr Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. But the body she leads has only 12 other female members out of 163.

The situation seems to reflect society’s present views on women's participation in politics, however. According to a 2011 poll carried out by the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), 14pc of respondents believed that Russia had too many female politicians, 37pc thought their number should be increased, while 33pc believed that the number should remain the same. Half of the respondents supported the idea of quotas for women politicians, and only 5pc strongly opposed it.

Divisions over women politicians reflect the conservative, patriarchal outlook of society, which remains dominated by traditional views of the roles of men and women.

Russia has no prominent political parties that make women’s rights a part of their platform.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the

Russia moves closer to building reactors in UK

PHOTOXPRESS

Will a woman reach the top?

NEWS IN BRIEF

After the wave of criticism, President Vladimir Putin said he was ready to take part in formulating the law, saying: “We need both to protect intellectual rights and not to kill the internet.”

The Russian Association for Electronic Communications said it doubted that the bill would succeed in stamping out piracy.“The adoption of the law would cause an exodus of Russian site owners to foreign jurisdictions, financial losses and widespread violations of the rights of law-abiding Russian and hosting providers, communications operators and site owners,” said analyst Irina Levova in an interview with Lenta.ru.

The problem, however, runs deeper: there is no exact definition of the term “piracy”. A person hiding behind the nickname Fyodor Dostoevsky blogged: “It is very hard to prove that torrent users are acting as ‘pirates’: they can download content for their own use without any economic benefit.”

Journalist Aleksei Kravetsky also spoke up on behalf of non-commercial pirates. “If laws

are passed that forbid the sharing of books, music and films, proceeds will not increase; people will simply not be in the position to share any more,” he said. “The only result will be that people will read, listen and watch less.”

The science fiction writer Sergei Lukyanenko said, however, that he would abandon the profession unless the piracy situation in Russia improves for writers. “I know a great number of notable authors who have stopped writing,” he said. “They either go into scriptwriting or computer game production. An author who is just starting out is practically unable to get a creative career off the ground.”

The champions of electronic democracy – the Pirates’ Party of Russia – wants existing payment systems to be revised. If a person’s right to download (for a fee) and distribute is approved, the author would gain from it, the party reasons. It also seeks a shortened time period before films, music and books enter the public domain.

9

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS AND SECTIONS ABOUT RUSSIA ARE PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES, A DIVISION OF ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA (RUSSIA), IN THE FOLLOWING NEWSPAPERS: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, UNITED KINGDOM • THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, UNITED STATES • SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, THE AGE, AUSTRALIA • LE FIGARO, FRANCE • SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, GERMANY • EL PAÍS, SPAIN • LA REPUBBLICA, ITALY • LE SOIR, EUROPEAN VOICE, BELGIUM • DUMA, BULGARIA • POLITIKA, GEOPOLITIKA, SERBIA • ELEUTHEROS TYPOS , GREECE • ECONOMIC TIMES, NAVBHARAT TIMES, INDIA • MAINICHI SHIMBUN, JAPAN • GLOBAL TIMES, CHINA • SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, CHINA (HONG KONG) • LA NACION, ARGENTINA • GULF NEWS, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES • FOLHA DE S. PAULO, BRAZIL • EL OBSERVADOR, URUGUAY • EMAIL INFO@RBTH.RU. MORE DETAILS AT HTTP://RBTH.RU/ABOUT

Business & Finance www.rbth.co.uk_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_P3

AFP/EASTNEWS

Weaker rouble to help drive car production Exchange rate A forecast decline in the currency’s value will make imports more expensive for consumers but aid domestic retailers and auto manufacturers ARTEM ZAGORODNOV SPECIAL TO RBTH

Economists predict that a falling rouble would boost exports and tax revenues and provide a fillip to carmakers and other local businesses. Some experts argue that the rouble, now trading at around 33 to the dollar (down from 30 at the start of 2013), may sink as low as 37 by the end of the year.

Factors behind the decline range from concerns about the end of quantitative easing in the United States to statements

by Anton Siluanov, the Russian finance minister, that a weaker rouble would bring benefits for Russia.

Sluggish economic performance in the European Union, Russia’s largest trading partner, and less-than-rosy forecasts for GDP growth at home have also had an effect. Today’s slide is not as dramatic as that of 1998, however, when the rouble went from six to the dollar to nearly 30 and Russia’s oil companies made windfall profits by selling crude in dollars while booking profits in roubles. Oil companies will not benefit to the same degree this time, because new tax rules mean the state will collect most of the surplus profits.

“The real beneficiary [this time] is the state budget,” says Chris Weafer, founding partner of Moscow-based Macro Advisory. Other beneficiaries should include domestic producers as the costs of imported goods increase.

“One of the biggest winners will be Russia’s burgeoning auto industry,” adds Mr Weafer. A recent World Bank study ranked Russia as Europe’s largest economy, and the world’s fifth-largest in terms of purchasing power. Local winners could include Russian food retailers such as Dixy; Russia’s only publicly listed meat-producer, Cherkizovo; and Magnit, the firm that has been described as “Russia’s Walmart”.

Exports should also benefit from a cheaper rouble. Mr Weafer says: “A Russian company called VSMPO-AVISMA is Boeing and Airbus’s largest supplier of titanium.

The aircraft manufacturers are now getting that input cheaper.”

The weaker rouble also means that Russia’s food exports to the United States, such as caviar and crabs’ legs (valued at $175m (£110m) in 2012, according to the US Census Bureau), will be less expensive.

This could also be a great time to buy a diamond for that special someone.

“Russia’s Alrosa is the world’s second-largest diamond exporter after South Africa’s De Beers,” says Mr Weafer.

Russian consumers face the potential downside of a weaker rouble, however, as their cost of living increases as imported goods, particularly foodstuffs and clothing, become more expensive.

Money men: finance ministers meet at the G20 in St Petersburg, where debt topped the agenda as experts warned that ‘public debt may soon flatten everything in its path’

United over tax in the shadow of debt G20 Summit Structural reforms to boost investment and addressing tax havens on St Petersburg agenda ARTEM ZAGORODNOV SPECIAL TO RBTH

THE QUOTE

"

Russia’s current economic growth model relies heavily on consumption. There is good reason to expect this trend to continue, thanks to low unemployment and strong income growth.

NATALIA ORLOVA ALFA BANK

“The house of cards of the world economies continues to collapse. The problems of Greece and Cyprus are just the beginning of a global trend. Public debt may soon flatten everything in its path like a huge snowball.” These ominous words came from a recent report by the World Organisation of Creditors.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that debt topped the agenda at the G20 summit in St Petersburg this month, an appropriate venue given host Russia’s record low debt-to-GDP ratio of 11pc (compared to 92.2pc in the eurozone at the end of March, or the 103pc in the United States, at $16.7 trillion).

Despite low debt, Russia’s economy is growing only slowly. Growth in the first half of 2013 was 1.4pc versus 4.5pc a year earlier, capital flight continues to drain $6-7bn (£3.8-4.4bn) per month from the economy and investment is a far cry from the 27pc of GDP that President Vladimir Putin hopes to achieve by 2018.

Yet unlike its peers in Europe and America, Russia’s economic malaise is essentially selfinflicted: with more than $500bn in foreign reserves, the country has the resources and the

cash to spend its way out of the slump if it chooses. This difference in policy options may have been why public debt management and sustainability was essentially tabled at the summit, according to Martin Gilman, former senior representative of the IMF in Russia.

So far, Russia’s authorities have resisted attempts to weaken its currency and thereby stimulate exports, focusing instead on achieving sustainable long-term economic growth through an improvement in institutions. At the summit, Russia advanced much-needed structural reforms locally and internationally.

Investment barriers

“One of the key items on this summit’s agenda was structural reform,”said Evsey Gurvich of the Group of Twenty Expert Council.“These are reforms aimed at improving the efficiency of the economy and the investment climate.

Each country adopted an individualised plan for doing this, including plans for lowering the tax burden on entrepreneurs and improving infrastructure.

“Russia has made commitments to lower administrative barriers and reduce state regulation of the economy. It has committed to increasing the number of economic activities not requiring any regulation from 36 to 50 by 2018.

This will help increase the investment component of the economy to 27pc by 2018.”

Building Brics

Mr Putin made one of the most eye-catching announcements when he signalled that the Brics

THE NUMBERS

90pc of the world’s GDP is produced by the G20.

Russia accounts for 3.4pc, says the IMF

£14 trillion was held in 4,800 banks globally in 2010, according to The Tax Justice Network – £4 trillion in UK dependent territories

$10k billion is the reserve fund being created by Brics countries as an alternative to the IMF

(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group of developing nations had agreed to create a $100bn reserve fund to steady currency markets, a de-facto alternative to the IMF and Bretton Woods-based global financial system. The move would mark the first major step towards building common institutions and adding substance to the group’s decisions.

“One of the issues tabled at the G20 was redistributing votes in the IMF,”said Mr Gilman.

“The Obama administration feels it’s not in a position to push that agenda through Congress.

Without the US, which has a blocking share of votes, this isn’t going to happen. Developing countries such as China and Russia are demanding a larger say in how organisations like the IMF spend their money as they’re now creditors. This move sends a signal to the IMF that there will be serious competition if it remains dominated by the old powers.”

Fighting tax evasion

While positions on austerity and debt indicated a growing rift between developed and developing countries, tax evasion and offshore havens were surprising points of agreement.

“To fund the other initiatives of the summit such as job creation and infrastructure, you have to find ways to optimise finances,”argued Mr Gurvich.“First, a new automatic system of exchanging information on where international companies pay taxes will be in place by 2015.

This is directed at minimising both legal and illegal ways companies use to reduce their tax burden. Second, tax legislation across different countries will be standardised within oneand-a-half to two years to minimise loopholes.

Finally, rules governing companies’ abilities to change tax residences in various jurisdictions will be optimised.

“While these steps won’t solve all of the problems associated with tax havens and evasion, they are important because no one country is able to effectively pursue them alone.”

Russia’s promotion of this point internationally follows the adoption of unprecedented anti-corruption laws at home over the past year that ban officials from holding bank accounts or real estate abroad.

Russia banks on big being beautiful in financial regulation Banking The plan divided opinion, but industry insiders are now cautiously optimistic as the Central Bank is assigned new powers to oversee the majority of the nation’s financial sector TATIANA LISINA SPECIAL TO RBTH

Russia’s Central Bank became the country’s financial market mega-regulator on September 1 following the transfer of a number of functions previously performed by the Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS). In addition to its supervision of the commercial banks, the function of a single regulator includes the monitoring of non-bank financial institutions, including insurance companies, asset management

companies, pension funds, brokers and exchange intermediaries, as well as microfinance institutions. As a result, the high standards that exist in the banking sector will spread to areas that are currently less tightly regulated, for example in microfinance.

The new agency is headed by the Bank’s first deputy chairman, Sergei Shvetsov, the ideologist behind the creation of a “floating corridor”for the rouble against a dollar-euro basket, a tool launched in 2009. According to Mr Shvetsov, the changes due to the transfer of the Central Bank’s functions will not be

dramatic and will be quite slow. The main thing is the synergy effect from the merger of the two structures.

The idea of creating a financial megaregulator in Russia has been discussed over the past seven years. It had both supporters and opponents, who believed that the creation of a single agency was unnecessary, and that it would be better to define the powers of existing regulators more precisely by changing legislation.

The single organisation’s supporters were not united either: they disagreed for instance over which agency should become the basis for creating a chief overseer. Some advocated the option of forming it on the basis of the FFMS, which was already controlling the stock and insurance markets. But their views were outweighed by those who argued that the experience accumulated by the Central

Bank in supervising Russia’s banking system made it the ideal candidate on which to build the super-regulator.

As a result, in December of last year, the government decided to integrate the FFMS into the Central Bank, and set a deadline of 18 months to two years to complete the amalgamation process.

Experts have generally reacted positively to the appearance of a single supervisory body.

Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Russia, said that the reform fits into the general trend of regulatory changes in leading financial markets. For example, the European Central Bank is gradually gaining more and more such power.

“In the conditions where various segments of the market are interconnected, consistency and prompt action are important to resolve a crisis. We have segments of the market, which

require active policy agreed by the regulator,” he said. In his opinion, the FFMS could not solve all the regulatory problems in its area of responsibility.

As for the stock market, its response was generally restrained.“Some investors fear that the Central Bank will be less focused on a flexible exchange rate and inflation targeting,” Mr Lissovolik said.

For foreign investors, the pros and cons of creating a mega-regulator will become apparent only after a period of time. For now at least, they, like Russian participants in the market, are hoping that the Central Bank can tackle some of the reforms needed to speed up harmonisation. According to Mr Lissovolik, due to the existence of several decision-making centres, some reforms such as the introduction of Euroclear calculations, were previously moving too slowly.

Comment & Analysis P4_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_www.rbth.co.uk

FINDING THE WILL AND THE WAY TO DESTROY SYRIA’S CHEMICAL ARSENAL table. Such action would probably require an international coalition and a UN mandate. In addition to a strong no-fly zone, about 50,000 troops, comprising special operations forces, heavy army units outfitted with tanks and explosive ordnance disposal units would be needed in the troop mix, Wald was quoted as saying. Other experts put the likely size of such force at up to 75 thousand.

And this is where the US-Russian deal, and Syrian acceptance of it, comes in handy. For the deal to work there will have to be a ceasefire in Syria’s civil war, so that the international personnel needed to secure chemical weapons can enter the country and get to the sites unimpeded. This will create a unique window of opportunity for the diplomatic efforts to convene the Geneva-2 conference, which have been frustrated for most of 2013. It would be the first real test of readiness of all parties to the civil war to seek a negotiated solution.

Including the players outside Syria, says Vladimir Orlov, president of Russia’s PIR Centre. He warns of a risk for the Lavrov-Kerry agreement to fall foul of the ploys by the Gulf monarchies to get rid of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad at all costs. Mr Orlov cautions Moscow from putting too much pressure on Damascus to disarm until it gets solid enough guarantees of its security. If there is no stable and verifiable ceasefire,

Nikolai Gorshkov

WRITER

The Syrian deadlock might – just might – be unpicked with the help of some chemistry between Russia and the US. The initial shock mixed with jealousy at Russia’s diplomatic coup has given way to speculation: will the breakthrough US-Russian agreement to rid Syria of chemical weapons work and will it change anything in Syria’s bloody conflict?

There is no shortage of expert predictions that this daunting task will take ages and probably will never be fully completed. After all, says Dr Aleksandr Gorbovskiy, a prominent Russian expert on chemical disarmament, the three countries that have been actively decommissioning their chemical weapons, the US, Russia and Libya, have all missed the deadline of April 29, 2012 for the full destruction of their chemical arsenals set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Libya needs two to three more years; Russia hopes to finish the job by 2019; and the US plans to complete by 2023.

The US-Russian framework for the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons aims to have all of them secured by the end of this year and destroyed by mid-2014. Dr Gorbovskiy is sceptical. “Given that Syria may have no less than 1,000 tons of chemical warfare substances,” he says, destroying them within 2-3 months is impossible; the process may take two to three years. They will need to build the facilities, bring and install the necessary equipment, train personnel, ensure security, health and safety, etc. Only then can we talk about the actual date of completion of the destruction of these weapons.

However, it is hard to believe that teams of Russian chemical weapons experts, assembled

by Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov were so naïve as to come up with such an unrealistic timetable. According the man with a wealth of experience of chasing Iraqi chemical weapons, and whose job it is to assess Syria’s chemical arsenal, Dr Ake Sellström, the task of finding and destroying all of those weapons is quite complicated but achievable. A lot will depend on whether the Syrian government and the opposition can agree on the implementation if this task. As the saying goes, if there is a will, there is a way.

the perils for the UN inspectors may prove to be prohibitive. As US intelligence think-tank Stratfor put it: “In addition to being vulnerable to indirect fire, UN inspectors are also likely to become targets for rebel factions that want to derail the UN mission and recreate the conditions for a strike to help shift the battlefield in their favour.”This view is echoed by Akio Kawato, former Japanese Ambassador in Uzbekistan, posting on the Moscow Carnegie Centre discussion board. “Probably, things in Syria will not proceed as smoothly as desired; there are forces, which are eager to use the US hitting power and to topple the Assad regime,” he writes.

So what are the options for the decommissioning of Syrian chemical weapons (CWs) under the perilous conditions of the civil war?

Whatever the option, the political risks may be higher than the logistical ones. Russia is insisting there should be absolutely no threat of use of force against Damascus

Option one

Collect all such weapons and bring them to a central depot in a secure part of Syria for handling by international experts. The collection and delivery should be arranged by the Syrian government, which has just acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which commits members to destroying their stockpiles. And Assad has confirmed his willingness to abide by the convention in an interview with Fox News. That would be the safest option for the international personnel who would not have to venture into hostile territory. However, there would be no way for them to verify if all weapons were collected and accounted for.

Once collected, the weapons must be destroyed. Building a decommissioning facility from scratch in Syria will take up to two years, reckons Andrey Baklitskiy, information projects director at the PIR Centre. It would be quicker to ship the weapons for destruction in Russia as it has the capacity to destroy 1,000 tons of chemical agents within four months, provided of course, that it stops destroying its own chemical weapons for that period.

Dr Gorbovskiy is not so optimistic.

First, he says, Russia would slip fur-

ther behind the internationally established schedule for the destruction of its own weapons. There is simply no spare capacity at Russian incinerators. Second, transporting volatile chemical substances is risky in peacetime, let alone during a war. Russia decided against transporting its own chemical weapons to a central decommissioning facility and built incinerators next to every weapons depots to minimize the risk of contaminating large areas.

Option two

Build decommissioning facilities next to the Syrian depots of chemical weapons to avoid the risks of transportation. That would require international teams to disperse across vast and hotly contested territory. Mr Orlov is not sure how effectively Damascus can safeguard its chemical weapons in the chaos of the civil war.

“Is there absolutely no collusion between the rebels and sympathisers at the chemical facilities?” he asks. A quick comparison of a map of Syrian chemical weapons sites with that of rebel-held areas suggests that some sites may be either in rebel hands or besieged by them.

Dr Gorbovskiy believes the US should use its influence with the opposition to make sure these facilities are secured and handed over to the international inspectors for the work of their destruction to begin in earnest.

Option three

Dr Gorbovskiy points to the experience of Libya, where the US and Italy have built a mobile facility to destroy chemical weapons at different locations. This could move around Syria under the protection of a mobile UN force. Again, this scenario would would require the co-operation of all warring sides. Failing that, a robust international intervention would be required to seize Syrian chemical weapons sites. But that, Stratfor analysts predict, may well trigger the collapse of the Assad regime, leaving the intervening force with responsibility for the post-Assad Syria.

Whatever the option, the political risks may be higher than the logistical ones.

Russia is insisting there should be absolutely no threat of use of force against Damascus, to which President Obama would never agree, says Viktor Mizin, the deputy director of research at Moscow Institute of International Relations. Mr Obama, he believes, simply cannot afford to be seen as a weak politician. Russia’s initiative has given him a respite, a room for manoeuvre, but it is not going to last for long. He will have to take a decision sooner or later.

Dr Mizin believes that both Russia and the US have little appetite for escalating their rhetoric any further, and will start taking a more pragmatic approach, provided it is still possible after all the heated exchanges.

The way will not be easy

As early as May 2013, a retired US Air Force general, Charles Wald, who served as deputy commander of US European Command until 2006, told the US Armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes that if the international community wanted to seize control of Syrian chemical weapons, ground forces would be inevi-

Nikolai Gorshkov is a freelance writer based in London. He served as a BBC correspondent in Eastern Europe from 1979-2012.

SERGEY YOLKIN

INSTANT INSIGHT

Explore US-Russian relations with RBTH’s new project, Russia Direct

Moscow’s fear of post-Assad chaos Mark Galeotti

RBTH

INTERNATIONAL ANALYST

Ekaterina Zabrovskaya Editor-in-chief

EXCLUSIVELY AT RUSSIA-DIRECT.ORG

Andrei Slepnev, minister for trade of the Eurasian Economic Commission, explains the impact of Russia’s accession to the WTO on Russian business people and consumers. Just as experts anticipated, accession to the WTO has not brought any dramatic changes for Russia. So why has it not reaped the benefits of WTO membership?

REUTERS

The WTO: in the long run, it gets better for Russia

Russia is presented by the global media as a monolithic entity with a clear-cut global agenda, a sort of neo-KGB empire run by President Vladimir Putin, bent on restoring the global influence of the Soviet era. Russia Direct explores seven often overlooked players who determine how Moscow reacts to world events. Find out who they are at russia-direct.org

ITAR-TASS

What influences Moscow’s foreign policy?

The United States and Russia have had a long relationship with an impact reaching far beyond their own borders.

Take any major international issue and the chances are that both Washington and Moscow have a vested interest in it, which sometimes unites them and at other times puts the two countries at odds with each other.

In June, Russia Beyond the Headlines launched Russia Direct, a project whose mission is to improve US-Russian relations on the interpersonal, inter-agency and intergovernmental levels.

The Russia Direct team in Moscow works with experts and journalists worldwide to bring readers the critical analysis they need to better understand not only exactly what is happening, but also why.

The articles and opinion pieces available at russia-direct.org provide the kind of nuanced understanding required by those with a profound involvement and interest in US and Russian foreign policy. The project also offers monthly analytical reports, written by leading experts, that provide readers with insights into topics that drive the agenda for decision-makers from both nations.

Additionally, Russia Direct publishes quarterly white papers, available to subscribers only, that dig into a major topic in Russian-US relations. The first white paper, which was released on September 3, focused on soft-power initiatives.

In the long term, we hope that Russia Direct will serve as a platform for experts and senior decision makers from both countries to discuss, debate and understand the issues that affect relations between the US and Russia.

Subscribe now at russia-direct.org/subscribe

Washington is certainly unhappy with Moscow over its refusal to follow its lead over Syria. Clichés about authoritarians sticking together are being recycled, and suggestions made that Russian policy is driven by the value of Damascus’s arms contracts or a strategic need to maintain naval facilities at Tartus on the Syrian coast. These are all questionable assertions. Until relatively recently, Bashar al-Assad had been wooing the West. Back in 2011, when the conflict was still in its early stages, then-president Dmitry Medvedev warned him that he needed “urgently to launch reforms [and] make peace with the opposition”. Syria is only Russia’s 13th largest arms customer, with sales worth just under a billion dollars (£626,000) a year, out of $15.7bn (£9.8bn) last year: considerable, but not enough to drive policy.

As for Tartus, it is little more than a refuelling point with a dozen Russian personnel.

Russian policy is driven not by political affinity, economic gain or geopolitical ambition, but a combination of anger and fear that Washington has done nothing to address. Indeed, to a considerable extent, US policy has created the very obduracy with which the Russians are now resisting the American lead. US Secretary of State John Kerry has admitted the presence of “an Iraq hangover” leading to “a huge doubt in people’s minds… because we all got burnt by that and we’re still paying the price.”

Perhaps more important is the “Libya hangover”. In 2011, Moscow agreed to support what was meant to be a limited NATO operation to protect civilians. Instead, what followed increasingly became an air campaign to support the rebels and topple the Gaddafi regime. To Moscow, US claims that it seeks to punish Assad’s regime for using chemical weapons are disingenuous. White House denials that it seeks regime change sit uncomfortably

White House denials that it seeks regime change sit uncomfortably with the oft-repeated line that ‘Assad must go’

with the oft-repeated line that “Assad must go”. It is unsurprising that Russia assumes that if it gives an inch on Syria, US cruise missiles will take a mile.

Why should Russia care if Assad’s thoroughly unpleasant regime falls or not? It fears the aftermath if power falls to a resistance movement made up of a combustible mix of democrats, patriots, opportunists, bandits and jihadists, connected with both Iran and al-Qaeda. It would empower possibly Turkey and certainly Iran, countries with which Russia is competing for influence along its southern flank. Turkey has been supporting the mainstream Free Syrian Army (FSA) and presumably expects a key role if it takes Damascus. Far more likely is a protracted period of anarchy, with struggles for power splitting the FSA. This would further destabilise the region and could affect Russia directly. Chechens – from the North Caucasus, Syria’s Chechen community and the wider diaspora – are fighting with the rebels, especially in jihadist units such as the Al-Nusra Front. Once the war ends, the fear is that they may make their way back to the North Caucasus and, as in the Nineties, they may bring with them allies and money to reinvigorate the conflict there.

TV footage of graffiti on Syrian walls reading, “We started in Syria, we will finish in Russia,” suggests more than just Muscovite paranoia.

In this context, Washington has done nothing meaningful to address Russian concerns. It has expressed a hope that a post-Assad Syria will be stable, secular and democratic without giving any signs of having a credible strategy to accomplish this – and its track record in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya hardly bodes well. It’s always easier to assume one’s critics are fools and scoundrels rather than take their views on board. So long as Washington regards Moscow as acting out “like the bored kid in the back of the classroom” – to use President Obama’s phrase about President Putin – it can hardly complain if Russia continues to question its slide towards intervention in Syria.

Mark Galeotti is Professor of Global Affairs at NewYork University.

This is an edited version of an article that was first published on russia-direct.org

Comment & Analysis www.rbth.co.uk_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_P5

DON’T USE MILITARY FORCE TO SEND A SIGNAL: USE EMAIL

ART OF DIPLOMACY

Syrian crisis: between unilateralism and collective effort

Fareed Zakaria

WRITER, BROADCASTER

I

Alexander Yakovenko

As international negotiations over Syria reach a critical stage, RBTH puts the most pressing questions of the day to writer and broadcaster Fareed Zakaria, the man Esquire magazine called “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation”.

AMBASSADOR

t is widely agreed that the latest proposal to put Syrian chemical weapons under international control and subsequently destroy them has drastically changed the terms of debate on the conflict. The New York Times rightly noted that it “could open up a broader channel to a political settlement between Mr Assad and the rebels – the only practical way to end this war”. But the positive implications of a shared success are more far-reaching. This is not just about Syria alone. It is about bringing back trust, undermined in many ways over the past 20 years, with negative consequences for almost any major item on international agenda.

I agree with Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, who wrote in his blog: “The Russians have taken a step towards America on Syria. The Americans should now respond.”This complex message is the key point President Vladimir Putin makes in his direct appeal to the American people, published in the NYT. Unfortunately, in our bilateral relationship we have reached the point when the record has to be set straight and in public.

The measure of deterioration is shown by the Financial Times, which finds it hard to grasp the motives behind Moscow’s initiative since “the Russian leader is not inclined to do Mr Obama favours”.This sort of stereotyping makes people believe Moscow proceeds from the assumption that it will gain from any outcome in Syria, however disastrous, and even prefers watching the administration and America self-destruct in Syria and the broader Middle East.

This is a simple way to avoid serious analysis of the intractable dilemmas in Syria, faced not only by the US, but the international community at large. It isn’t Russia’s fault that time and regional context haven’t been on the opposition’s side. Our diplomatic effort is based on the recognition of the death of the old geopolitics, which led to blunders such as the Crimean War, tragedies such as two world wars and the time warp of the Cold War. Russia doesn’t seek the comfort of freedom of action provided by aloofness, by not staying in touch with western partners.

The lack of communication between our societies is a problem of fundamental importance. Dr Rowan Williams in his research on Dostoevsky (2008) concludes that human communication is one of the essentials in life. We also believe in the openendedness of human narrative as inherently linked to an issue of freedom. Projected to societal development and international relations, it is a powerful critique of end-ofhistory notions. As John le Carré put it in a recent FT interview, “the next worst thing after communism was anti-communism”.

So we seek to restore those channels of communication, to remove the barriers of ideological Cold War prejudice. Specifically, we propose to take collective action through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the UN Security Council on a host of regional problems.

A proxy war by regional powers in Syria and military action by extra-regional powers are no substitute for a regional solution of the crisis. This was why President Putin as host of the G20 summit did his best to enable his colleagues to have an in-depth discussion of Syria outside the formal agenda. The Geneva talks between Sergey Lavrov and John Kerry have the potential to be a crucial turning point not only in terms of Syria but far beyond. That is why it is so important to follow the agreed script and to get the entire undertaking right.

AlexanderYakovenko is Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He was previously Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Keep in touch with the Russian Embassy in London: www.twitter.com/Amb_Yakovenko www.twitter.com/RussianEmbassy www.twitter.com/RussianEmbassyR (Russian version) www.facebook.com/RussianEmbassy www.youtube.com/RussianEmbassy www.slideshare.net/rusemblon www.flickr.com/photos/rusembassylondon russianembassy.livejournal.com

Letters from readers, guest columns and cartoons labelled “Comments”, “Viewpoint” or appearing on the “Opinion” and “Comment & Analysis” pages of this supplement are selected to represent a broad range of views and do not necessarily represent those of the editors of Russia Beyond the Headlines or Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Please send letters to the editor to UK@rbth.ru

THIS EIGHT-PAGE PULL-OUT IS PRODUCED BY ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA (RUSSIA) WHICH TAKES SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ITS CONTENTS. ONLINE: WWW.RBTH.CO.UK; E-MAIL: UK@RBTH.RU TEL. +7 495 775 31 14 FAX +7 495 988 9213 ADDRESS: 24 PRAVDY STREET, BLDG 4, SUITE 720, MOSCOW, RUSSIA 125993

VOX POP What RBTH readers think about the hot topics. From facebook. com/russianow Bonnie Boglioli Randall on women in politics Russian aristocratic women long enjoyed greater freedoms and thus power (Catherine the Great, Maria Naryshkina, etc).

Women such as Anna Akhmatova played a key role in Russian culture at the turn of the century. But communism distinctly appealed to women with promises of equality; the early years saw many women abandon traditional familial patterns in favour of earning advanced degrees and working.

Remarkably, women held many more positions of power and certainly education long before their counterparts in the West."

"

Sanjay Sutradhar on drug addicts Russia’s drug problem was unheard of before glasnost. But it seems to have become more obvious in recent days, along with the way it can break up families... it’s a gift of capitalism and too much democracy."

"

Lucile Deslignères on the threat to Russian bookstores Hope it won’t become as bad as San Francisco!

But I live in Oxford, England, and it is still paradise with Blackwell’s and Waterstones and Oxfam and, and, and…"

"

Will the agreement on a decommissioning process be enough to prevent military intervention in the Syrian civil war, especially if incontrovertible proof emerges of the regime’s use of chemical weapons?

I believe so. I think one has to remember that the military strikes would have had no impact on the regime’s chemical arsenal. There is a mistaken notion that the strikes were meant to target the chemical weapons; they were not. If chemical weapons were targeted they would, of course, explode, releasing toxic gases into the atmosphere. The strikes were to be purely punitive.

So ask yourself: what is the most important task here? It is to isolate and perhaps destroy these weapons. The negotiated strategy is much more likely to yield progress on that front even if the Syrian government does not reveal everything the regime has; even if the process is cumbersome and there is a cat-and-mouse game involved.

That strikes me as a much better outcome if your concern is chemical weapons. Now, of course, there are a lot of people who really do want to intervene in the Syrian civil war and do want regime change and, yes, this negotiated strategy does not address that issue.

Similarly, what should happen if the rebels are found to have been guilty of the act?

It’s a fascinating idea. I have to say that, from the evidence I have seen, I don’t believe the rebels are using chemical weapons. I don’t think they have the sophistication or the organisation to use them... I don’t think there is much evidence that they have used them.

However, if that were to happen it all the more suggests following the strategy that I am recommending. That is focusing on the issue of getting these chemical weapons out of Syria or under lock and key or destroyed, and being cautious about intervening in the civil war.

So far, the West seems to have been pretty selective about which dictators it has sought to remove from power. Should we be aiming for regime change in Syria?

I don’t believe we should be following a strategy of active regime change in Syria. Because that means that the US and the West have to bear the consequences of the collapse of the Syrian regime; and all the potential chaos and anarchy that would involve.

We have seen, both in Iraq and Afghanistan,

when political order collapses it is an extremely messy process. If you are the one who precipitated that collapse, you are naturally held responsible for it, and then blamed for everything that goes wrong. It then becomes a potentially decade-long top (and very expensive) priority in your foreign policy. So, I have always thought that the president made a mistake in calling for the ousting of Assad in a rather casual manner.

Military force is not an instrument of communication; it is an instrument of compulsion

Will the fall of the Syrian regime bring about the end of the Syrian civil war? What you have said so far suggests you think not.

I would say it even more definitively: almost certainly it will not bring about the end of the civil war, because we have seen this movie before. The Syrian regime is the third of three great minority regimes in the Middle East. The Lebanese Christians were the first ones to be challenged by a majority: it was a 15-year, messy civil war.

In Iraq, we deposed the minority Sunni regime but the regime fought back as insurgents and guerrillas: it was a 10-year civil war. And, by the way, the conflict is not over yet: Iraq is the second most violent country in the world after Syria today.

In Syria, you have the third of these historical processes: a minority regime being challenged by the majority. Even if the regime is deposed, I am absolutely certain that elements and supporters of the regime will fight back as insurgents and guerrillas. They have an enormous number of arms.

Remember, the Syrian army is 300,000-strong and very well-trained.

So what you will enter into after the deposition of the regime is phase two of the war, which will probably be the massacre of the Alawites.

Phase three will be the fight among the various Sunni insurgents as to who is going to win.

no question about that. He took advantage of a certain incoherence in American foreign policy towards Syria.

The US had multiple goals and was stating them almost seriatim, without any sense of priority. He [President Putin] picked out one and said, if you are really concerned about chemical weapons, then here is the solution. He forced some clarity on the Washington administration. In effect, the US had to pick between regime change and the international norms that they were trying to uphold.

Putin has long wished that he and Russia could play a larger role on the world stage in precisely this way: as a force that is able to thwart what he sees as a rampant American hegemony in a kind of global management of the world.

As to your larger question of whether this reflects the return of Russia to the world stage, I would be somewhat cautious. Despite all of the things that have happened since the fall of the Soviet Union, so many different breakaways of republics and such, there is only one case in which it used the Russian army, and that was the case of Georgia – which is a very particular one.

Finally, can you offer your best- and worst-case scenarios for the short term?

I think the best-case scenario is that in three or four months, the inspectors are in Syria; they are checking and isolating certain important caches of chemical weapons.They are probably not all of the weapons: the regime is probably hiding some. But there is some significant progress and you are getting a regime that always denied even having these weapons to admit to having them, identify them, take the inspectors to them and have them placed under control, and perhaps destroyed.

The worst-case scenario is that there is so much obstruction that Syria, in effect, calls America’s bluff about the use of military force.

Then, of course, it would not be a bluff; the US would have to follow up on its words – which I think is unwise.

Military force is not an instrument of communication, it is an instrument of compulsion.

You use it when you want to thoroughly defeat the other side. You don’t use it to “send a signal.” For that we have diplomacy and email.

To use a poker metaphor, Mr Putin seems to have played his hand cannily throughout. Are we seeing the re-emergence of Russia as a major player in the global game?

Putin has played his hand very well, there’s

Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and is a former Newsweek columnist.

SERGEY YOLKIN

NOTEBOOK

Just here to help the ladies: a chivalrous band of brothers Paul Carroll

SPECIAL TO RBTH

A new age of chivalry may be dawning in St Petersburg. Not content with merely holding open doors and giving up their seats for the fairer sex, the men of Russia’s second city now seem determined to remodel themselves as modern-day Sir Galahads.

Operating on a purely voluntary basis, St Petersburg men of all ages have been using social networks to sign up to an informal group of “brothers”. Their quest? To provide help and support to their “sisters” – ie, women who suddenly find themselves in need of a little muscular, masculine assistance. (The kind of help we’re talking about here is walking buddies for strolling home late at night; roadside rescues; help with moving home; DIY work, etc.)

So far, there has not been an overwhelming response from the sisterhood, which is understandable: without the ability to run any meaningful background security checks, it is going to take some time for the group to gain the trust of the women.

And while it’s heartwarming that a few good men are trying to resurrect some good oldfashioned, not-for-profit values in this largely venal modern age, you can’t help wondering if a few wolves in sheep’s clothing may be tempted to use the service as an alternative to on-

EUGENE ABOV PUBLISHER, PAVEL GOLUB CHIEF EXECUTIVE EDITOR, MARIA AFONINA EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF WESTERN EUROPE, ILYA KROL EDITOR, UK EDITION, ALEXANDRA GUZEVA ASSISTANT EDITOR, TONY HALPIN GUEST EDITOR, OLGA DMITRIEVA ASSOCIATE EDITOR (UK), PAUL CARROLL SUBEDITOR, SEAN HUGGINS SUBEDITOR, ANDREY SHIMARSKY ART DIRECTOR, MILLA DOMOGATSKAYA HEAD OF PRE-PRINT DEPARTMENT, ANDREI ZAITSEV PHOTO EDITOR, SHAUNA MASSEY PROOFREADER

line dating: one which offers a bit more than a few email exchanges.

How long before a damsel in distress discovers an ogre underneath the shining armour? Who knows? Romantics everywhere will have their fingers crossed that the scheme succeeds, and they all live happily ever after.

Dancing around the issue

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in Sergei Filin’s recent clear-the-air meeting with the dancers and backroom staff of the Bolshoi ballet. It was artistic director Filin’s first time back at the theatre since a horrific acid attack in January left him burnt, facially disfigured and partly blinded in one eye.

With the perpetrators now safely behind bars, you might imagine that everyone could get back to concentrating on the quality dance productions for which the Bolshoi is so rightly world renowned. But with more treachery, infighting and intrigue than the plot of Boris Godunov still simmering under the specacularly gilded surface, well, watch this performance space.

Driller thriller

It can't be a bundle of laughs being manhandled by a bunch of burly balaclava-wearing heavies. Or staring down

E-PAPER VERSION OF THIS SUPPLEMENT IS AVAILABLE AT WWW.RBTH.RU TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SUPPLEMENT CONTACT SALES@RBTH.RU © COPYRIGHT 2013, ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALEXANDER GORBENKO CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, PAVEL NEGOITSA GENERAL DIRECTOR, VLADISLAV FRONIN CHIEF EDITOR.

Without full background security checks, it’ll take some time for the group to gain the women’s trust

the barrel of an AK-47.

Still, the 25 Greenpeace activists aboard the Arctic Sunrise arrested recently over their attempts to disrupt the work of a Gazprom oil rig can think themselves slightly lucky that the Russian coastguards were slightly more discriminating than their French counterparts in their dealings with environmental protesters.

Back in 1985, French special forces mined and sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, resulting in the death of a Dutch photographer.

While this latest clash doesn't seem to have sparked the kind of diplomatic meltdown experienced by France and New Zealand in the wake of the earlier incident, the Dutch ambassador in Moscow was, nevertheless, summoned to discuss the issue. Greenpeace is based in the Netherlands and the Arctic Sunrise is registered there.

Fighting talk

People queueing at a bar on an outdoor City Day in Rostov-on Don were treated to a dose of philosophy in action when a heated argument between two men about Immanuel Kant – one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment – erupted into a fist-fight.

The deciding factor in the debate came when one of the protagonists pulled out an air pistol and shot his opponent in the head.

Thankfully, the wound was not a mortal one, but the perpetrator is now facing up to 10 years in prison – time enough to familiarise himself thoroughly with the weighty Kantian canon.

Notable for developing a universal law of morality, one must seriously doubt whether the great man himself would have approved.

ANY COPYING, REDISTRIBUTION OR RETRANSMISSION OF ANY OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS PUBLICATION, OTHER THAN FOR PERSONAL USE, WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED. TO OBTAIN PERMISSION TO REPRINT OR COPY AN ARTICLE OR PHOTO, PLEASE PHONE +7 (495) 775 3114, OR EMAIL UK@RBTH.RU WITH YOUR REQUEST. RBTH IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS AND PHOTOS.

TATYANA RUBLEVA RBTH REPRESENTATIVE IN UK TATYANA.RUBLEVA@RBTH.RU

Education P6_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_www.rbth.co.uk

The online revolution is a class act Start-ups IT sector booms as new companies use the internet to transform the way millions of children learn

the heavy and bulky textbooks that children have to bring to the school every day.

Since December last year, the Federal Institute of Education Development has been running a nationwide e-textbook distribution system in partnership with Azbuka. The latter has developed the system and converted current textbooks for digital use; it argues that books accessible on a tablet or laptop are cheaper than conventional paper ones, allowing schools to cut costs.

It was not long before the market for electronic courseware in schools attracted other players. In August, Russia’s IT behemoth Lanit said it would start offering a solution, and it is a safe guess that schools will soon be able to choose from a variety of providers.

Yet even when large, state-supported companies enter the market, there’s still space for start-ups to make an impact. YaKlass, valued in a recent investment round at $2m (£1.26m), claims to have found a solution to a problem that has challenged teachers ever since internet access became widely available. “[Today’s] children are used to copying homework from the internet and teachers have no means to prevent it,” said Valery Nikitin, YaKlass’s founder and chief executive.

The solution Nikitin’s company offers lies in procedurally generated homework tasks that are unique for every schoolchild: there is no chance of the pupil finding ready-made answers online. The idea first came to a mathematics professor who gave procedurally generated tasks to his students. YaKlass bought the idea and adjusted it to suit the needs of Russian schools.

ANDRII DEGELER SPECIAL TO RBTH

In Russian schools, paper is slowly giving way to e-books, tablets and laptops as more and more information technology companies emerge to provide new services for education. If 15 years ago computers were used in schools mostly to teach children basic programming and common office applications, as well as to print endless documents, many of today’s pupils now use all sorts of gadgets for their studies on a daily basis.

E-learning has taken its place among the most popular segments of the Russian IT business market in the past few years. Start-ups and established companies see huge potential for innovation, supported by government and private venture capital. In 2012-13 alone, more than $10m (£6.3m) was invested in education technology companies in Russia, according to data from trade publications.

New technologies have found their way into all parts of the education market, including schools, private tutoring and distance learning. While it lags behind some western countries in terms of development, the market has many very promising players.

Learning in the cloud

Changing our lives

KIRILL LAGUTKO

Net gain: young Russians are benefiting from a big programme of investment by information technology companies in schools

THE NUMBERS

4,521,189

pupils all over Russia learn with Dnevnik.ru

28,772

schools in project. US and China to join soon

Lightening the load

Several other companies aim to help schoolchildren with their everyday tasks. The most obvious problem to solve is the one involving

Testing time in the push to raise academic performance Education policy New curriculum introduced to improve educational standards after international league tables give mixed picture of achievements by Russian pupils ALENA LOBZINA SPECIAL TO RBTH

Svetlana Levkovets, a 49-year-old teacher from St Petersburg, has grown accustomed to “competing with mobile phones in the classroom”.Ms Levkovets says she tries to come up with homework that forces her students to work without technology, adding: “Just give the kids assignments where they have to compare facts and the internet will be of no help.”

Lilia Brainis, 24, who taught for three years at Moscow Lyceum 1535, which is often considered one of the capital’s best schools, believes there is no point fighting against technology. In an era when it seems that all answers can be found online, it is the teachers who have to adapt, she said.

Today’s teens have more up their sleeves than just their gadgets in any case. In May, answers to the Unified State Exam, known as the Ye GE – which was intended to revolutionise Russia’s secondary education system by replacing the more subjective university entrance exams given to graduating seniors – were leaked to VKontakte, the huge social network sometimes called Russia’s Facebook. It triggered a storm over cheating.

Irina Abankina, director of the Education Development Institute at Moscow’s Higher

MULTIMEDIA

Scan this code to read more about education in Russia

E-learning goes the distance to deliver on demand Away from schools, distance learning is an emerging trend. While many Russian students enrol for courses with popular international services, such as Coursera, Udacity and Khan Academy, there are domestic alternatives that can compete with their western counterparts.

One of the bestknown examples is LinguaLeo, a web service that uses popular books and

television series to teach English to its users. The company is seen as one of the most successful Russian start-ups in the field of e-learning, especially after securing a $3m (£1.9m) investment round from Runa Capital last year.

Private tuition has also become very popular in the past 20 years. One of the biggest players in this field is Eruditor Group, a network of online marketplaces for

finding and booking teachers, which was launched in 2006 with a project called Vash Repetitor, which is Russian for ‘Your private tutor’.

The company has received more than $17m in funding since then, including $12m this year, to develop its services.

In summer 2012 a team of specialists launched Rosalind, an educational project named after the mid-20th century

British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin. The project is an English-language web portal where users study bioinformatics, solving biological problems through computer programming.

A team of Russian and American scientists are offering everyone an opportunity to explore a cutting-edge branch of modern science.

Users around the world are giving the team’s unique project due credit.

School of Economics, believes that the Ye GE issues reflect a lack of values in modern Russian society, but that, in general, education reform is moving in the right direction.

According to data from her institute, since the Ye GE was introduced in 2009, the number of students who moved from one city to another for educational reasons increased by 16pc. She attributes the change to the test.

Previously, every university gave its own exam and would-be students had to go in person to take the entrance exam. As a result, many students went to college where they lived.

Before the Ye GE students living outside big cities “never dared to try” to enter some of Russia’s best schools, said Ms Abankina.

Making the grade

Another step to create national standards and make sure that the best students are on track for university started last spring. All ninth graders had to pass an exam called the State Final Certification, or GIA, in order to continue on to the last two years of high school. Students who do not pass the exam will continue instead to vocational school.

Despite these small changes, the education system in modern Russia does not differ much from that of the Soviet Union. Children start school at the age of seven and spend the first four grades with the same teacher READ MORE at www.rbth.co.uk/ and classmates. Primary education is considered strong in the fundamentals, but tag/education

New technologies have changed all our lives but the debate continues over whether the effect is always positive

New technologies have undoubtedly changed our lives: the way we communicate with each other, the way we learn and teach, the way we travel and the way we spend time at home – everything was different before internet-enabled computers, mobile phones and other undoubtedly useful gadgets were introduced. The question remains, however, whether the effect of this is always positive.

It’s certainly true that, thanks to the internet, education has become more accessible and convenient for those who want to learn, while new services bring a variety of subjects and sources that it would simply have been impossible to access 20 years ago.

According to Mr Levi, there have even been experiments conducted that prove a correlation between the level of information technology development, academic progress and attendance in school.

On the other hand, plagiarism and general sloppiness are widely believed to be a result of children’s use of the internet. Some critics even claim that soon many children will not be able to write with a pen or pencil, but only type on a keyboard or touch screen.

While only time can judge the merits of this debate, it can already be seen that many problems produced by new technologies can also be solved using the same technologies. In the long run, that may leave society with just the positive effects. What’s needed most is passionate people willing to work in this field and innovate — and this is something today’s Russia does not seem to lack.

lower half of a table of the 74 countries that took part in the survey of reading, mathematics and science.

The results of the assessment were particularly striking because younger Russian students consistently appear near the top of international rankings. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science study carried out in 2011 put Russian fourth and eighth graders in the top 10 in every category out of the 57 countries surveyed.

Ms Abankina said the reasons for the results were clear. She explained: “The ability to apply what you know, to think, to conduct research and work on projects, this remains our weak spot. And we didn’t have it in Soviet schools either.”

© MIKHAIL MOKRUSHIN / RIA NOVOSTI

About half of the past year’s investment in education technologies went into Dnevnik.ru, a start-up launched in 2009 that provides an all-round e-document management system for nearly 29,000 Russian schools, more than half the national total. The system is hosted by the company, and all users need to do is log into their account at the website.

Gavriil Levi, who started the project after witnessing the lack of communication between his parents and his younger brother’s school, says that Dnevnik.ru has grown from a selffinanced start-up to the biggest education initiative in the country.

“We connected several schools ‘manually’ at first. We went to meet principals, parents and teachers, presented the product and explained why it’s useful,” Mr Levi recalls.

Growth has been boosted by a Russian government decree that all schools must introduce e-document flow systems by 2014. Mr Levi recently told Vedomosti newspaper that he expects Dnevnik.ru to be in up to 35,000 schools by 2014, while the other 20,000 will use rivals such as NetSchool and Paragraph.

Dnevnik.ru expects to become profitable early next year. Mr Levi says: “Basic functions are and will always be free, while paid features such as text messaging, the access control system, or electronic vouchers for school canteens, can make the system even more useful.”

Looking to the future Hard lessons: Russians do well in maths and science at an early age but their applied knowledge is weaker

3 FACTS

ABOUT SCHOOLS IN RUSSIA

1

There are 1,457 regular state schools in Moscow attended by 856,000 students in grades 1 to 11.

By comparison, Greater London has 2,228 state primary and secondary schools serving 1,166,000.

2

The average school year in Russia lasts 164 days, according to the OECD. State schools in England must be open for at least 190 days a year, though many choose to have a longer academic year.

after students move into secondary school, the differences between the Russian curriculum and those of schools in other countries become more obvious.

Competing globally

The Programme for International Student Assessment carried out in 2009, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), revealed that Russian 15 year-olds were not as capable as their counterparts in other countries at solving problems in a real-life context and reflecting on the meaning of what they read.

Although Russia has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, it ranked in the

3

Nearly 30pc of Russia’s schools were closed between 2000 and 2011 because of a declining birth rate. A small baby boom in the early 2000s resulted in protests last year over a lack of available places.

Educational reforms that will make a clean break with the Soviet past have only just been launched, in the form of new education legislation, which came into force on September 1, 2013.

Under the new system, which will be fully implemented across the country only by 2020, high-school students and their parents will be allowed to choose some subjects for in-depth study and others less intensively.

But there are concerns about whether the country will have enough qualified teachers to fulfil the goals of the new curriculum. In 2010, President Vladimir Putin, who was then the prime minister, announced plans to cut the number of teachers given that the country’s demographic crisis meant that there would be fewer students in Russian schools.

Between 2000 and 2011, nearly 30pc of the country’s schools were closed, according to the Education in Numbers statistics book published by the Higher School of Economics in 2013. Before the start of the present academic year, Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s chief public health official, announced that another 733 schools were to shut down soon.

In other cases, small schools have been combined, with several buildings sharing a single administration or, in the case of St Petersburg School 685, where Svetlana Levkovets teaches chemistry and biology, two schools have been combined into a single building. The new building stands near a busy highway instead of the leafy courtyard where her old school was.

But Ms Levkovets remains positive.“It’s interesting to see how the new standard will work,” she said.“The worst that can happen is that everything will stay as it is now.”

Culture www.rbth.co.uk_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_P7

Anna Karenina: the plot thickens works that makes everyone talk about them?”

Anyone was able to offer their ideas for news headlines based on famous classic masterpieces to the portal of the project and thus take part in the contest, which promised attractive prizes. Examples include:“Envy prompted sisters to attempt double murder of a mother and baby”; and “Official’s daughter confessed she dated a lunatic”.

Readers willingly joined in the game, though some visitors to the news portal seemed not to realise that it was a joke. They revealed their feelings about the fate of an opposition leader’s mother (a news headline based on Maxim Gorky’s novel The Mother read:“Mother of one opposition leader may be sentenced to longterm imprisonment”), or debated the ethics of experimenting on stray dogs.

ALENA TVERITINA RBTH

“Ecologists sound the alarm: developers threaten ancient forest”;“Partygoer shoots friend over passing flirtation”; “Wife of high-ranking official kills herself after argument with lover”; “Visiting caretaker proves to be ruthless dog hunter”. These and other headlines exploded across the Russian internet news landscape on September 2, the first day of school after the long summer holiday, which is known in Russia as the “Day of Knowledge”.

Encoded within the texts of these alleged news stories were the plots of classic Russian literary works: Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Ivan Turgenev’s Mumu and many more. the world Readers round Readers who could not recognise the works Rap for reading WHERE DO PEOPLE READnot MORE? by themselves were left in the dark: the The movement to popularise literature is a reHours per week person.

Source: World Culture Score Index sponse to a troubling decline in reading among headlines ledper to a specially created portal that connected the news text to the corresponding Russians, which sociologists seemingly bring literary work, could then read or to public attention year after year. This sumINDIA which users 10:42 downloadTHAILAND for free. mer, the Public Opinion Foundation released 09:24 “We areCHINA demonstrating08:00 to internet users who data showing that 44pc of Russian respondPHILIPPINES 07:36 visit newsEGYPT sites that all the ents had not read a single book in the course 07:30plots that can be CZECH REP. 07:24 have already apfound in modern news stories of the previous year.

RUSSIA 07:06 peared in Russian literature somehow or other,” Just as unsettling was data from the market SWEDEN 06:54 FRANCEhead of the says Yuri Pulya, Periodicals, Book research company TNS Russia, which stated 06:54 HUNGARY Publishing and Printing06:48 Division of the Fed- that Russian citizens use different media for a SAUDI ARABIA 06:48 eral Agency forKONG Press and Mass Communica- total of around eight hours per day, but that HONG 06:42 POLAND 06:30 tions (Rospechat). the amount of time they spend reading a book VENEZUELA 06:24the Russian Book The agency, together comes to just 1.8pc of the total, or only about SOUTH AFRICA with 06:18 AUSTRALIA Union and independent06:18 advertising agency nine minutes per day.

INDONESIA a campaign 06:00 Slava, is organising to encourage It is not surprising that in such a situation ARGENTINA 05:54 reading. The main goal is05.54 to attract attention the popularisation of reading is being given TURKEY 05.48 which, for many to RussianSPAIN classic literature, particular attention, including at the govern05:48 Russians, CANADA remains only a feature of the school mental level.The National Programme for ReadGERMANY 05:42 USA curriculum. ing Promotion and Development started in 2006 05:42 ITALY 05:36 and includes other memorable initiatives. For MEXICO 05:30 example, in last year’s project by Rospechat, Read all about it UK 05:18 BRAZIL 05:12 “The result has been an appealing, interesting Read, which targeted teenagers, the organis05:00 initiative,”says ers portrayed the powerhouse Russian writers and, most TAIWAN importantly, beneficial JAPAN 04:06 Mr Pulya.KOREA “At the very least, people read these Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Alexander 03:06 news items, post them on social networks, and Pushkin in athletic uniforms and had them aWHAT conversation about literature takes place on rap soulfully, along with Nikolai Gogol and RUSSIANS READ Hours perlevels. week per person. Source: Superjob.ru, 2011. 1,600 respondents Fyodor Dostoevsky. several less than 24 years old (%) All readersthe (%) initiative Men (%) Women (%) “Also, this sparks creativity: will make people want26to find their own The medium and the message 21 DETECTIVE STORIES 28 25 classic literary work and think up a news item Besides Rospechat, publishers, social organi31 FANTASY 32 24 41 based on its plot. And the information noise sations and even the City of Moscow authori14 LOVE STORIES 11 19 1 will make them interested: what is in these ties are zealously promoting reading. And over

Laid-back literature: readers relax in the park; below, Read ads portraying, from left, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov as sports coaches

GETTY IMAGES/FOTOBANK

Literature Campaign turns heavyweight Russian fiction into snappy stories to encourage more internet users to get the reading habit

-

PRESS PHOTO (3)

+

the past few years, noteworthy initiatives have appeared quite regularly.

Some have been rather traditional. For example, in A Word for the Book, a major 2008 campaign by the publisher ACT, famous Russian writers were pictured on posters describing the importance of reading. There were also projects by the Eksmo publishing house (Read books – be a character; and Read books!) in which popular figures and musicians, along with Russian footballers and coaches, discussed Scan this code for the benefits of reading. more articles on Other promotional campaigns have sought literature and to view 25-34 years old (%) 35-44to years old (%)potential >45 years old (%)in the textual meimmerse readers an interactive image dium. Moscow’s36 subway system boasts colour25 36 and Poetry in the Metro READ MORE 32 ful Reading Moscow 35 23 at www.rbth.co.uk/ trains, whose interiors are covered not with 11 6 8 advertisements but with excerpts from literread_russia

MULTIMEDIA

HISTORICAL NOVELS

29

29

28

20

28

39

46

BIOGRAPHY/FICTION

15

17

13

12

14

18

21

RUSSIAN CLASSICS

30

24

35

31

30

29

31

FOREIGN CLASSICS

24

18

29

26

24

21

19

MODERN FOREIGN PROSE

13

9

16

18

12

7

9

MODERN RUSSIAN PROSE

11

9

12

10

10

12

14

OTHERS

16

19

13

16

15

15

17

Screen gems: the rise of e-books in Russia DECREASE iN PAPER BOOKS BY CIRCULATION

2010v2011

2011v2012

2000v2013

-6pc

-12pc

-33pc

online books competition

65pc

expense of paper books

27pc

less time to spend reading

28pc

READ E-BOOKS

44pc 6pc 14pc 9pc 10pc 15pc 8pc 4pc

58pc Less time to buy books

decreased

grown

73pc

16pc

11pc

HOW MANY BOOKS DID YOU READ IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS?

POPULAR DEVICES FOR READING E-BOOKS IN RUSSIA

38pc

38pc

HOME PC

NOTEBOOKS

E-READER DEVICE

28pc SMARTPHONE

2011 3.94

Don’t want to spend money

30pc 28pc 22pc Can find titles not found in stores

Minimize clutter

Easier to read

21pc Supports more texts

2pc Others

2013 4.23

grad-london.com/whatson/utopialtd-2013/

FROM CUBISM TO SURREALISM

21pc TABLETS

WHERE RUSSIANS GET THEIR E-BOOKS

ST PETERSBURG GALLERY SEPTEMBER 20–DECEMBER 21

HOW MANY PAPER BOOKS DO YOU BUY?

69pc buy fewer books 24pc buy same number as before 7pc buy more books

92pc 31pc

Soviet avant-garde artwork reconstructed for a contemporary audience. Model maker Henry Milner creates striking sculptures inspired by the geometric experiments of Soviet artists El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, and brings to life designs by Vladimir Tatlin and Latvian graphic artist, Gustavs Klucis.

36pc DOWNLOAD FROM INTERNET FOR FREE

St Petersburg Gallery in London specialises in exhibiting and selling Russian paintings and works of art from the 18th to mid-20th centuries, Impressionist paintings and modern European art. This time, the gallery presents works of the artist Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné. www.saintpetersburggallery.com

COPY E-BOOKS FROM FRIENDS

15pc BUY E-CONTENT ON SPECIALIZED WEB SITES

TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA GAIA RUSSO

REASONS FOR TURNING TO E-BOOKS

unvaried

1992 5.14

HOW MANY BOOKS HAVE YOU READ iN THE LAST YEAR? All kind of books None One book 2-3 books 4-5 books 6-10 books 11-20 books more than 20 Can't answer

E-BOOKS

50pc have turned to e-books in the last 1-3 years and 23pc in the last year

42pc

UTOPIA LTD GRAD GALLERY SEPTEMBER 21–DECEMBER 20

70pc

MAIN REASONS OF DECREASING INTEREST TO PAPER BOOKS

ary works, authors’ biographies, illustrations of characters and original graphics. The exhibitions are thematic and change periodically.

The “Books in the Parks” campaign, which Rospechat launched in 2012, also turned five popular Moscow leisure venues into arenas for meeting with writers. In addition, the campaign equipped these venues with“Gogol modules” – kiosks where visitors could purchase books for the lowest price in Moscow. To round out the campaign, grass art portraits of authors were placed in the parks.

Next on the agenda is the creation of book clubs all over Russia. In particular, they are designed to help facilitate the organisation of videoconferences, involving well-known writers and publishers. The first of these clubs will start in the Russian regions in November 2013.

CALENDAR UK EVENTS

NUMBER OF PAPER BOOKS IN HOME LIBRARY

PAPER BOOKS

The Books in the Parks campaign turned Moscow leisure venues into arenas for meeting with writers

CADOGAN HALL OCTOBER 4

As part of the Zurich International Orchestra Series 2013-14, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra,

which has been led by Vladimir Fedoseyev for nearly 40 years, is performing in London. The programme features Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, Shostakovich's Symphony No 10 and Rachmaninov’s captivating Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini played by award-winning young Russian pianist Andrei Korobeinikov www.cadoganhall.com

RUSSIAN BALL IN LONDON ROYAL ALBERT HALL DECEMBER 2

Russian dances have always been known for their luxurious decorations, exquisite costumes and refreshments.

Alexander I’s ball during the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815 impressed its participants with its unprecedented scale and unique charm. Paying tribute to that great epoch, the Russian charitable ball to commemorate 400 years of the Romanov dynasty is intended to revive the great tradition of Russian balls abroad. Up to 2,000 people are expected to attend the event. www.russianball.co.uk/en/ball.html

FIND MORE IN THE GLOBAL CALENDAR

at www.rbth.ru

Sport P8_Tuesday, September 24, 2013_www.rbth.co.uk

FINAL THIRD

Final whistle blows for the Abramovich era James Ellingworth

Big spender: Zenit St Petersburg earned only £51m in 2012 but spent much more. The break-even element of the Financial Fair Play rules is clearly a problem for the club

Is Uefa playing fair? Low-income clubs may fall foul of spending rules Football Russian sides fear for the future as they struggle to match the commercial success of their European rivals TIMUR GANEEV

COUNTDOWN TO SOCHI

SPECIAL TO RBTH

136 days to go

REUTERS

His National Academy of Football fund has pumped around $200m (£125m) into the grassroots of the game in Russia, but Roman Abramovich is ending his involvement.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, with it went much of Russia’s highly structured state football programme, designed to funnel talent into a national team that played “scientific football” in an attempt to prove the superiority of the new socialist man.

The end of that system sent youth football into deep decline – facilities rotted as Russian clubs were forced to sell talented youngsters abroad to survive.

After nine years, 130 new pitches and one world-class youth academy, as well as paying millions of dollars in wages to employ Guus Hiddink as national coach, the foundation “is winding down following the accomplishment of its goal to rebuild the infrastructure for grassroots football development in Russia”, according to John Mann, spokesman for Abramovich’s company, Millhouse.

One of the project’s main achievements was to transform a provincial academy near the car-making city of Tolyatti, which now has up-to-date pitches, medical facilities and tutoring for its young talent. The academy’s coaches have even been sent to Chelsea’s training ground to learn from the team.

The most potent symbol of the project’s success so far is Alan Dzagoev, who spent his formative years at the Tolyatti academy and is now a playmaker capable of creative fireworks for CSKA Moscow and Russia.

Abramovich has spent about $2bn of his oil fortune on football, most of it on Chelsea, which he bought in 2003. With the end of the National Academy foundation, he is no longer funding any Russian football projects, though “it is possible” he could do so in the future, Mr Mann says.

The end of Abramovich’s funding comes as another oligarch is reducing his involvement in Russian football. Billionaire fertiliser baron Suleiman Kerimov stunned the footballing world when he slashed spending at his club Anzhi Makhachkala – which once had a transfer budget that was the envy of the world – last month and launched a fire sale of star players, including the transfer of Samuel Eto’o and Willian to Chelsea.

Since then, there has been speculation about Kerimov’s health and legal problems (he has been declared a wanted man in Belarus over a collapsed business deal), and Anzhi has swiftly returned to being a modest provincial side after harbouring ambitions to become Russia’s pre-eminent club.

But there is no general oligarch exodus from sport. President Putin’s childhood judo pals Boris and Arkady Rotenberg are on the offensive. Between them, they have partfunded the Winter Olympics in Sochi, taken control of the Dynamo Moscow football and ice hockey teams, and are now trying to bring the first Finnish hockey team into the Russian-controlled KHL league.

In Russia, as the world over, billionaires just cannot seem to resist the siren call of sport. An oligarch and his money are not easily parted – unless there is a ball involved.

REUTERS

SPECIAL TO RBTH

President Vladimir Putin confirmed there would be no discrimination at the Winter Olympics against people on any grounds, whether ethnic, gender, or sexual orientation. There had been fears that gay athletes would be unable to take part because of Russia’s new law against gay propaganda.

The summer football transfer window has closed after many impressive deals, including the most expensive signing in the history of the game. Welsh midfielder Gareth Bale swapped the white shirt of Tottenham Hotspur for the white shirt of Real Madrid, who handed his former club €100m (£85m) in return. Real held the previous transfer record after paying £80m to buy Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United in 2009.

Russian clubs have also strengthened their teams substantially, with heavy spending.

Dynamo Moscow spent £57m while neighbours Spartak spent £27m, and Lokomotiv dished out £26m. It all looks rather comical, considering the introduction of Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules. Clubs do not spend less, players’ salaries continue to grow, and the number of transfers increases. English Premier League clubs spent a record £630m on strengthening their teams during the recent transfer window, easily eclipsing the previous record of £500m, which was set in 2008.

The Fair Play rules essentially require that clubs should not spend more per year than they earn, but there are a number of exceptions. If the club has a rich owner, he is allowed to cover losses of no more than €45m (£38m) from his own funds. This option, however, will only be available in the early years of the scheme. Later, the amount that an owner can

Start point: Red Square

Duration: 60 mins

Frequency: every 20 mins

Ticket length: 24 hours

Season: all year round

Commentary: Russian, English, Spanish and German

spend will be reduced to €30m and clubs are all expected to become self-sufficient by the end of the decade.

St Petersburg’s Zenit club earned £51m in 2012, but spent much more.The combined transfer fees of Brazil’s Hulk and the Belgian Axel Witsel alone came to £64m.

“Since 2012, the Financial Fair Play rules have taken full effect for Russian clubs,” says Dmitry Mankin, Zenit’s commercial director.

“It’s no secret that the problem for Zenit is the break-even criterion.We are seriously concerned about this, since the commercial success of the Russian football league is a lot less than that of the leading European countries, due to uncontrollable external factors. These are the population’s low incomes and the state of sports infrastructure, the scale of piracy, as well as various regulatory constraints.”

The Zenit representative expressed his concerns about the stadium, the club’s continuing participation in European competitions, and having such a rich sponsor as Gazprom, the energy giant.

What about clubs from the lower half of the league, which depend on regional budgets and earn only around €30,000 a year from selling merchandise? A Russian club’s income from television rights ranges between £2.45m and £4m. For comparison, In England, BSkyB is paying £760m a year for 116 Premier League fixtures and BT is playing £246m a year for 38.

There is progress in Russia on increasing the income from television rights, but the effect on club incomes is still limited. The only way to avoid sanctions from Uefa, it seems, is to reduce spending on transfers or bet on the talents of a club’s trainees.

Current Russian champions CSKA Moscow took the first path. The army club has conducted some very successful transfer business for

THE NUMBERS

229,337,518 Total amount (£) spent on transfers by clubs in the Russian Premier League for the 2013/14 season

14,301,353

Average amount (£) spent on transfers by Russian Premier League clubs in 2013/14

29,750,000 Record fee (£) earned

by Anzhi for selling Willian to Chelsea

the past five or six seasons, making a profit at the end of almost every transfer window. This summer, CSKA bought three promising players: the Bulgarian Georgi Milanov (£2.76m), the Swiss Steven Zuber (£2.76m) and the BrazilianVitino (£7.4m). It sold ageing strikerVágner Love to China’s Shandong Luneng for £9.8m and lucratively loaned out Pavel Mamaev, Sekou Oliseh and Tomas Necid for £2.8m each.

Anzhi Makhachkala – European football’s high-profile project – has decided to place its bets on rookies. The club changed its policy completely this year and released its highpriced stars. As a result, Anzhi became the world leader in revenues from the sale of players, earning £112m.

“Many clubs have already minimised their costs,” says Sergei Cheban, vice-president of the Russian Football League. “This is work in progress. We understand that we are going to play in Europe and according to Uefa rules, so we are trying to develop an optimal Fair Play model suitable for our country.”

Mr Cheban points out that Russian clubs cannot afford to spend money like Real Madrid.“This is one of the most popular clubs in the world; it has one of the world’s largest armies of fans,” he says. “Madrid already has a successful business model. Cristiano Ronaldo’s transfer was paid off in three years.

“But Russian clubs are far from this. We have just started to develop. After the difficult Nineties and early 2000s, some serious money started to come into our football. If, previously, we had second-rate foreigners arriving, today no one is surprised by the arrival of Brazil’s main striker, Hulk. Russian football is now on the right track. If we do not slow down, in five to six years we will be able to fight as equals with the world’s leading leagues, in financial matters as well as playing strength.”

There are 2,700 miles of streets in Moscow. Walking nonstop, at an average of three miles an hour, it would take you 36 days to see it all. Here is a list of must-see city landmarks....

The Udarnik Cinema Built in 1931 for the 14th anniversary of the October Revolution, the Udarnik is one of the oldest cinemas in Moscow. It is in the House on the Embankment, an apartment complex that was home to the Soviet elite: scientists, heroes of the Civil War, party leaders and prominent writers. The frescoes in the apartments were painted by the artists who restored the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge The bridge over the Moskva River, next to the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate.

It was on this spot that the amateur West German pilot Mathias Rust landed on May 28,1987 after flying from Hamburg to Moscow.

Balchug

Red Square

The Balchug is a man-made island that was formed when the Vodootvodny Canal was being dug out along an oxbow lake of the Moskva River.

A Unesco World Heritage Site, Moscow’s main square is next to the Kremlin. Red Square is home to St Basil’s Cathedral and Lenin’s Mausoleum.

Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge

Bolotnaya Square

A steel arch bridge spanning the Moskva River at the western end of the Kremlin. The existing bridge was completed in 1938 by engineer Nikolai Kalmykov. The railing illustrates the distinct style of that era.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts One of the most important Russian museums of European and world art, the Pushkin Museum celebrated its centenary in 2012. It has a collection of more than 670,000 objects, including original works by Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso.

In the 17th to 19th centuries, Bolotnaya Square was a place for having fun and engaging in fisticuffs. Criminals were punished on the square and sometimes executed publicly. The last public execution on Bolotnaya Square was in 1775, when Yemelyan Pugachev, leader of the peasant rebellion of 1773–1775, was beheaded.

Kropotkinskaya Metro station Originally named Dvorets Sovetov, the station was opened in 1935 as part of the original Moscow Metro. The station was renamed in honour of geographer, traveller and anarchy theorist Peter Kropotkin, who was born nearby in 1842.

Alexander Garden Moscow’s oldest park was built in the 18th century. Spread over 25 acres, the garden is home to historic sites including the Kutafiya Tower and the Italian Cavern.

Okhotny Ryad (Hunter’s Row) A historical street close to the Kremlin, it is home to the State Duma (Parliament) and the Moskva Hotel, one of the biggest in the city.

The Bolshoi Theatre One of Russia’s biggest – and one of the world’s most important – opera and ballet theatres. The image of the Bolshoi is one of Russia’s most iconic symbols; it appears on Vdokhnoveniye (“inspiration”) sweet wrappers produced by Krasny Oktyabr, on 100-rouble notes, and on Soviet and Russian stamps.