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Special Report Claiming the Arctic As the region opens up,

competition increases for its resources

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FeatureBuried in the Kremlin

A number of foreign communists rest in peace

with Soviet dignitaries

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

NEWS IN BRIEF

The Russian and U.S. air forces have held joint drills for crews and ground services as part of an effort to avoid near-misses and collisions in Syria, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

Cooperation with U.S. colleagues is develop-ing successfully as part of interaction with the international anti-terror coalition and the region-al countries, aimed at preventing air incidents to ensure safety above Syria, said Col. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Main Operative Di-rectorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff.

Kartapolov said that in the exercises, the troops practiced notifi cation, organization and coordi-nation; data-sharing between operative group staff members and the control and command posts of the Russian Air Force at the Hmeimim airbase and the strategic U.S. air operations center in Qatar; and alerting one another about dangerous military activities in the Syrian airspace.

Alexei Sorokin, general director of Russias WorldCup 2018 Organizational Committee, has deniedstatements by FIFA President Joseph Sepp Bla-tter suggesting that Russia had guaranteed itselfthe right to hold the 2018 soccer World Cup be-fore the vote. If there were people who made thedecision before Dec. 2, fi ne. But we didnt knowabout it. We werent aware of the executive com-mittees decision, World Football Insider cites So-rokin as saying.

In an interview with Russian news agency Tass,Blatter said that there was an inner convictionthat one championship would be held in Russia.It was decided, although not in writing, I sup-pose, that the vote would give the championshipto the two superpowers: Russia and the U.S., Blat-ter said in an interview with the Financial Times.Blatter also told Tass that he had spoken aboutholding the World Cup in Russia with PresidentVladimir Putin.

Under new hotel regulations that went into force Oct. 21, Russian hotels will have to tell clients which services they will have to pay for before their stay, and if a guest checks in at midnight and checks out by noon, they will be charged for only half a day.

Youth hostels and childrens camps are exempt from the new rules.

Prices for all services along with the hotel own-ers details must to be clearly posted at reception. Additionally, all guests, both Russian and foreign, will need to present their passports at check-in.

Russian and U.S. Forces in Syria Hold Joint Practice

2018 World Cup Director Denies Allegations

New Regulations Introduced for Russian Hotels

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Drones Offer New Views of Ancient Russian TownsRBTH.COM/534475

Tragedy Posts on social networks tell the stories of the passengers on board the Metrojet plane

The last moments of some of those who died on the flight were captured on social networks, which doesnt make it any easier for their families to say goodbye.

Metrojet fl ight 7K9286, an Air-bus A321 traveling from Sharm el-Sheikh was supposed to land at Pulkovo Airport in St. Peters-burg at 12:20 p.m. local time on Saturday, Oct. 31. It had 224 peo-ple onboard, including 25 chil-dren and seven crewmembers. The charter fl ight from the Egyptian resort was carrying tourists from 13 Russian regions, as well as cit-izens of Ukraine and Belarus.

Their pages on social networks feature photos against the back-drop of the exotic eastern fauna and the sea with such cheerful comments as, Hurrah! We are fl ying to warm up, Flight de-layed, but thoughts are already there and I never thought that #egypt would cause so many pos-itive emotions.

By 11 o clock on the morning of the crash, the area for greet-ers at Pulkovo Airport began to fi ll with the relatives and friends of passengers that were on the fl ight. Not everyone was imme-diately aware of what had hap-pened. Those who had heard the news stood aside near the infor-mation stands and did not know where to go or what to do.

Those that had arrived to greet their relatives and friends were crying and looking with hope at the arrivals board. It initially said that the plane was delayed. Half an hour before the expected land-ing, the information on the sta-tus of the fl ight disappeared. Peo-ple kept trying to call their family members, believing to the last minute that the worst could not have happened.

The chief passengerJust before departing Egypt, the parents of nine-month-old Da-rina Gromova took a photo of her as she looked at the runway through the airports glass.

Her mother Tatiana published the photo of little Darina with the caption the chief passenger on social media networks. Later, it became the symbol of the crashed fl ight with nearly a mil-lion people sharing it in memory

YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVARBTH

the time, Youre a fl ight atten-dant, too; why do you need this? If something happens, youll see it on the news. It seemed that he wanted to be ready not only for life, but for death, too, and con-stantly watched and studied crashes from all angles, his wife recalled.

But a bad feeling saved anoth-er fl ight attendant. Oleg Yerma-kov should have been on this fl ight on Oct. 31. It was his shift.

Two weeks before the tragedy, his father had a dream that a crash would happen and his son would die. Oleg, leave the job, his father said. A few days before the flight, the flight attendant wrote his letter of resignation. There were several reasons, Yer-makov said, but his fathers pres-sure was among them. He did not mention the dream to anybody else.

It is still difficult to be in Pulko-vo. The building is unusually quiet and the area in front is covered with fl owers and candles.

The number of fl owers at the airport and even the postings on Facebook it really helps [to soothe the pain], wrote the sis-ter of Anna Tishinskaya, a pas-senger on the fl ight, on her Face-book account.

But she continues to call her sister. Every time I understand everything, but I hold my breath and wait for beeps. There are no beeps. The subscriber is not yet available. Like an idiot, I love to believe in the word yet.

of the victims of the tragedy. None of them knew that this posting would be the last one in their lives, people have written as they shared the photo.

In August 2014, Tatiana had married Darinas father, Alexei. In their wedding video, they can be seen dancing the waltz, as Alexeis mother wipes tears from her eyes.

Thanks to my husband for this year, for the daughter, for the care and love! Tatiana wrote.

Were flying homeThe large Shein family was also coming home on the fl ight from Sharm el-Sheikh. They took their last pictures minutes before their departure to St. Petersburg right in the cabin wife Olga and hus-band Yury; Zhenya, 11; Valeria, 10; and three-year-old Nastya.

Hi Piter, goodbye Egypt. Were fl ying home, wrote Olga Sheina. The last two weeks of their lives were spent abroad on the fami-lys fi rst trip out of the country. The couple had marked the an-niversary of their marriage on Oct. 27.

27.10.2005. This was the day when we met and fell in love with each other. Then just a few years passed until 27.10.2011. And on this day we got married. Now we are happy together and celebrate our anniversaries, Olga wrote.

A bad feelingSix months ago, Svetlana Kry-lovas older sister, who was an en-

thusiast of palmistry, looked at her hand. She noticed that the life line was less than half of the palm.

Svetlana just laughed, as she did not believe that her time would come soon. At the age of 30, she had a very active life and loved to travel. Before leaving for Egypt, she was already planning a trip to China. She was with her husband Mikhail and 10-year-old daughter Kristina on the Metro-jet fl ight.

For some unknown reason, 32-year-old Yekaterina Murash-ova posted a song on her social media account entitled I Know I Will Not Return just before get-ting on the plane. She was the reigning beauty queen of the northwest Russian town of Pskov.

The families of the crew mem-bers were also mourning loved ones. They had not spent their fi nal days relaxing by the Red Sea, but were simply doing their jobs.

He was looking for himself, trying to fi nd a place for himself on earth, and said he could not live without aviation, said Anna, the wife of fl ight attendant Stan-islav Sviridov. He loved the sky.

In addition to his wife, Sviri-dov is survived by a young daugh-ter and a son. Annas voice trem-bled before the television cameras. During the last weeks before the crash, Stanislav was more timid, soft, as if he forebode his imminent death.

I told him, Write when you get there. But he was joking all

A flower near debris at the crash site of a Russian airliner in al-Hasanah area in El Arish city, north Egypt, Novem-ber 1, 2015

Bomb Called Likely Cause of Disaster as Investigation ContinuesOn Nov. 8, Reuters reported that infor-mation from the planes black boxes in-dicated to a level of 90 percent certain-ty that the Metrojet flight was brought down by a bomb. Four days earlier, Egyp-tian newspaper Al-Masri al-Yaum, citing sources in the commission of inquiry had reported that the transcript from the black boxes showed evidence of an explo-sion in the engine.Although the flight recorders did not re-cord any emergency calls from the crew to dispatchers, according to the Egyptians they indicate the presence of a power-ful explosion, simultaneous loss of all en-gine power, a fire in part of the fuselage and the destruction of part of the plane in the air.

Earlier, officials from the U.S. and the UK indicated that it was likely the plane had been destroyed by a bomb. Last week, the government of the UK halted all flights to Sharm el-Sheik due to concerns that the plane was brought down by a terrorist act.While the investigation is still ongoing, we cannot say categorically why the Russian jet crashed, said a statement from British Prime Minister David Camerons office. But as more information has come to light, we have become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explo-sive device.On Nov. 6, Russian authorities halted all flights to Egypt until the cause of the crash is determined.ISIS has claimed responsibility for the disas-

Last Words from Doomed Flight

ter, but there is no evidence as of yet that the group had the capability to de-stroy an airliner.Experts from the F.B.I. have now joined the investigation at the request of Rus-sian officials. To establish the exact cause of the di-saster, experts will have not only to fully decode the data from the flight record-ers, but also collect all the debris to re-assemble it in a hangar for careful in-spection. The debris from the flight is spread over a remote area of several square miles and the investigation has been hampered by bad weather.Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg, a memori-al service for the victims was held Nov. 8 at St. Isaacs Cathedral.

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Russian drivers who try to park in spaces reserved for people with disabilities could be in for a shock if a new system installed at sev-eral Moscow shopping centers catches on.

The system, launched in May by Dislife, a Russian nonprofit dedicated to improving life for people with disabilities, with as-sistance from the Y&R advertis-ing agency, projects a hologram of a man in a wheelchair into dis-abled parking spaces if drivers without a special disabled park-ing sticker attempt to use the spaces.

A special camera is installed above disabled parking spaces to check whether cars attempting

Technology Ad campaign hopes to raise awareness and shame those who cheat the system

Nonprofit uses high-tech program to raise awareness about the challenges facing disabled drivers and embarrass those who try to take their spaces.

to park there have the special sticker. If a car without a badge tries to enter the space, a holo-gram of a man in a wheelchair appears in the air, crying: What are you doing? Im not just a sign on the ground. Dont pretend that I dont exist. The hologram is pro-jected through tiny drops of water

diffused in the air.In addition to shaming drivers

who attempt to use the spaces il-legaly, the initiaves organizers hope to generally raise awareness about the misuse of disabled parking.

Parking signs mean nothing for many drivers in Russia,Yury

Kovalev, the founder of Dislife, told website Digital Trends just after the project launched. They prefer to forget about the people behind them. That is what we are fi ghting with in this project.

According to Dislife, more than 30 percent of drivers ignore dis-abled parking signs.

Since its launch, a video about the campaign posted on YouTube has been viewed over 3 million times. The campaign has also been featured in such popular West-ern media as IFLScience.

Life for people with disabili-ties has been improving in Rus-sia, particularly since the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games, but much work remains to be done. According to official data, 16,000 Moscow residents depend on wheelchairs, but only half of the capitals buses have wheelchair accessible, low-fl oor designs making it easier for many to rely on their on transportation, as long as they can fi nd a place to park.

Holograms Help Fight Misuse of Disabled Parking Spaces in Moscow

MARIA KARNAUKHOVASPECIAL TO RBTH

A hologram of a man in a wheelchair is projected into parking spaces.

Although Olesya Moskovskaya loved Beton, the cat she adopted from a shelter, she only realized how much he meant to her when he intervened to save her from a potentially deadly fall.

I am a sleepwalker and when I am under stress, I tend to walk in my sleep a lot, Moskovskaya explained. It was summer and my balcony door I live on the 14th fl oor was open. I woke up standing on the edge and my cat was frantically biting and scratching my legs. Another min-ute and.

Many Russians own cats and dogs, but the number of Russians like Moskovskaya who have ad-opted their pets from shelters is small. And the number of stray animals on the streets is not de-creasing. According to activists from the Vita animal rights cen-ter, new animals are abandoned to fend for themselves all the time.

Vita employees say that most Russians get a pet not for com-panionship, but because there is a certain prestige or cachet as-sociated with owning a particu-lar kind of dog or cat. When the realities of caring for an animal set in, the pet is often abandoned. Campaigns to spay or neuter pets have been mostly unsuccessful, so another source of stray ani-

Pets Activists tackle ongoing problem of street animals

The numbers of abandoned cats and dogs in major Russian cities show no signs of decreasing despite sympathy towards the plight of such animals.

Forever Homes Hard to Find for Strays on Russias Streets

A boy looks at a rescued dog in a shelter. Wild dogs are a problem in many Russian cities.

Anderson poses for a selfie.

MARIA KARNAUKHOVASPECIAL TO RBTH

Leningrad Region, which sur-rounds St. Petersburg, banned the hunting of stray dogs, saying such activities were not covered by the state law on hunting wild game. The St. Petersburg city govern-ment estimates that 700,000 stray dogs live in the city.

Shelter volunteers have report-ed an uptick in people coming in to adopt pets. Natalya Chaplin, founder and head of a volunteer project in Moscow called Sign of Faith, said: Five years ago, no-body spoke of the issue of stray dogs. When we began speaking about the problem of stray ani-mals, started holding exhibitions, people were very much surprised. Now the situation has, of course, improved considerably.

Whose problem?Activists would like the state to play more of a role in promoting animal welfare. Svetlana Ilyins-kaya, the president of the Legal Animal Protection Center, says that the state should work with volunteers, possibly through an advertising campaign, to combat the popular belief that putting an animal down is cruel, where-as leaving it in the street is hu-mane because it is an animals natural environment. According to Ilyinskaya, in fact the opposite is true: For pets, the street is an alien environment. Such animals do not know how to fend for themselves and do not live long. She would like to see a return to the practice of catching strays and keeping them in shelters.

Irina Novozhilova, however, thinks more effort should be put into convincing pet owners to be responsible and spay or neuter their animals. One suggestion: fi nes or taxes could be levied on those who refuse to submit their pet to sterilization, with even higher rates for professional breeders. Such taxes or fi nes could be used to fund shelters or other programs to help strays.

mals is unexpected and unwant-ed puppies or kittens. According to Vita, its not uncommon for a stray animal to give birth twice a year.

In many Russian cities, people have taken the problem of stray animals into their own hands, putting poisoned food in parks and other areas where street dogs, are known to gather, or, in more rural areas, simply shooting them.

Irina Novozhilova, the head of the Vita animal rights center, said in an interview with Moscow life-style website The Village that the poisionings are being scheduled using social media and that the authorities ignore such actions.

The poisoning of dogs takes place in Russian cities every day. Proving the poisoning and some-ones involvement in it is very dif-fi cult, even if the analysis con-fi rmed that the animal had poison in its blood. We need witnesses, Novozhilova told The Village. Un-fortunately, law enforcement au-thorities often ignore crimes re-lated to animal cruelty. They say : Weve got the corpses of people and you want us to focus on a dog?

Changing attitudesNevertheless, Russians are be-coming more sympathetic to the plight of stray animals. Accord-ing to a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation in January 2013, only 9 percent of Russians support the killing of street animals.

Additionally, earlier this year, the regional government of the

Celebrities Russias rare animals, particularly the Amur tiger and Far Eastern leopard, have attracted attention from American entertainers

Stars from the silver screen and the stage have found common ground in preserving the habitat of the rare and beautiful animals of Russias Far East.

A number of international TV and fi lm stars, from Pamela Ander-son to Steven Seagal to Harrison Ford, have taken a special inter-est in the welfare of Russias en-dangered tigers and leopards

Baywatch star Andersons red float recently went under the hammer for 3 million rubles ($44,000) at a charity auction in

the city of Vladivostok on Rus-sias Pacifi c coast. The funds will be used largely for the protection of the regions endangered leop-ards and tigers.

Anderson, who is known for her support of animal rights, sent an open letter to Russian Presi-dent Vladimir Putin in July, ask-ing Russia to prevent a ship car-rying 1.7 tons of fi n whale meat from Iceland to Japan from using the Northern Sea Route. The Rus-sian government rejected the re-quest, however, noting that Mos-cow had no legal grounds for detaining the ship because the whaling had not been conducted

I want to use my face and my name to help leopards, said Sea-gal. During his visit, environmen-talists told the actor that they have been able to increase the popula-tion of these big cats from 20 to 70 individuals, but the actor said that this was not enough. He prom-ised his personal assistance in pre-serving Russias rare predator.

From the Far East to L.A.The frontman of Russian pop rock group Mumiy Troll, Ilya Laguten-ko, and Hollywood star Harrison Ford have been involved in an in-ternational campaign to save the Amur tiger since 2008. On the ini-

tiative of the World Bank, a tiger coalition was created for the pro-tection of these animals, which included representatives of vari-ous organizations and celebrities; Russia is represented by Laguten-ko and the United States by Ford.

Leonardo DiCaprio is also in-terested in the fate of the tigers. He attended the International Tiger Forum in 2011 in St. Pe-tersburg and pledged $1 million for tiger conservation. He also regularly donates money for tiger conservation through his foun-dation and the World Wildlife Funds Save Tigers Now cam-paign.

Big Names Give Big Money for Big Cats

MARINA OBRAZKOVARBTH

on Russian territory. Anderson did, however, get an invitation to the Far Eastern Forum in Vladi-vostok in September.

Also at the auction, action hero Steven Seagal bought an axe knife made of Damascus steel in-laid with gold and silver for 229,900 rubles ($3,370) to sup-port Far Eastern leopards.

The actor said that he was com-pelled to help the animals after visiting an exhibition at the Land of the Leopard National Park in Russias Primorsky Territory, which monitors conservation and tries to increase the population of the endangered Amur leopard.

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RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESSection sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russia www.rbth.com BusinessWill the Russian Economy Be Hit by a New Drop in Oil Prices? rbth.com/535573

Online Gaming Hits the JackpotTechnology A massive investment in Russian e-sports by a well-known internet billionaire could be a game changer for the industry

Russian eSports could be on their way to global success with the announcement that Russianoligarch Alisher Usmanov, a co-owner of Facebook and Alibaba whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $14.4 billion, will in-vest $100 million in Russias main eSports club, Virtus.pro.

The world of eSports, in which participants take part in orga-nized multiplayer video game competitions, has become a fast-growing industry over the last few years, with more and more official competitions springing up, allowing individual players and even full teams to turn pro-fessional.

The funds will be usedprimarily for projects withpotentially high investmentreturns, Virtus.pros marketing director, Alexei Nazarov, said, explaining that Usmanovs investments are planned for a pe-riod of one to two years. It is the organization of new tournaments at the federal level, the develop-ment of media resources, the cre-ation of a new information por-tal about eSports [and] the development of sports arenas.

Commenting on the deal ,Yaro-slav Komkov, producer of the Cyber.sports.ru project, said: With this investment, Virtus.pro becomes the world leader, as no other eSports organizations have such capital. He noted that Vir-tus.pro is one of Russias stron-gest eSports clubs.

Not a virtual businessESports are a relatively new phe-nomenon. Although the fi rst com-petition a StarCraft strategy tournament took place in the late 1990s, these tournaments have started to draw massive au-diences only in recent years. Most frequently, they are organized by computer-game developers.

ESports, popular among young people, are increasinglybecoming part of the show, so we see it as a source of content that can be sold, said Virtus.pros Naz-arov. The standard media mon-etization model works here broadcasting, advertising, sponsors.

The sponsors of the tourna-ments are, as a rule, technology companies, electronics manufac-

turers, and telecommunications companies. Sometimes, fi nancial support is provided by conven-tional sports organizations. In Turkey, the Besiktas sports club bought a key Turkish eSports team, becoming its main sponsor.

It is unknown how much is

made on eSports in Russia. No one has yet attempted to calcu-late the revenues of tour organiz-ers or media companies involved in broadcasting eSports events, said Nazarov.

But in Yaroslav Komkovs opin-ion, there is no doubt that the

eSports market is hugely under-valued. According to him, the fu-ture belongs to organizations that can provide players with a salary and promotion, including support in the media and social networks. Usmanov is aiming for the future by buying an audience that is yet to be formed, Kom-kov said.

According to Nazarov, the eS-ports market in Russia will grow by 3040 percent per year in the long term.

The Russian eSports marketKomkov said that Russian eS-ports athletes have always been among the leaders: They have won championships in [World of ]Warcraft, CS 1.6 and many other

disciplines, and are generally con-sidered to be very talented in the world, he said.

Nowhere else in the world ex-cept South Korea are eSports of-fi cially recognized as sports.

In Russia, there was an attempt to legitimize the discipline in 2001. It received an official sta-tus, but was removed from the All-Russian Register of Sports in 2006 due to the inconsistency of

its ranking and scoring criteria. As well as its lack of popularity outisde of major population cen-ters in the country.

According to Komkov, Moscow and Kiev are the main eSports centers in the C.I.S. This is where two biggest gaming clubs are based Russias Virtus.pro and Ukraines NAVI.

Meanwhile, another majorRussian businessman Us-manovs longtime partner YuryMilner is also interested in the eSports market. In August, he in-vested $26 million in Super Evil Megacorp, the company that de-veloped the online strategy game Vainglory and created a venue of the same name for competitions of players from around the world.

ESports are becoming a spectator sport, with international tournaments drawing participants from all over the world, and Russian players are consistently at the top of the rankings.

Russias largest eSports club has won a major investment it hopes will result in more recognition and increased growth for the industry.

ANNA KUCHMARBTH

The name of the new restaurants is a nod both to the previous incarnation and to the Walking Dead meme.

It is unknown how much is currently made on eSports in Russia. No one has attempted to calculate the revenues.

In spite of Western sanctions and a decline in G.D.P., Russia has climbed 11 positions, to 51st place in the World Banks latest Doing Business rankings, an annual study devoted to analyzing reg-ulations and laws that directly affect businesses.

Over the past year, Russia has implemented several economic reforms that have contributed to the signifi cant advancement of the countrys ranking, the World Bank said in a supplement ex-plaining the rankings. In partic-ular, the organization highlight-ed the ease of registering property and enforcing contracts.

The Doing Business global rankings have become a kind of K.P.I. (key performance indica-tor) for the Russian government with regard to their importance for attracting investment.

The rankings are a guide for foreign investors, one of the studys authors, Valentina Saltane, said in an interview with the Rus-sian business daily Vedomosti.

In May 2012, President Vladi-mir Putin set the goal of increas-ing the countrys place in the rankings to 50th in 2015 and 20th in 2018. Therefore, according to

A new chain of burger restau-rants that owes its name in part to a meme based on the charac-ter Carl from U.S. zombie series The Walking Dead has opened in Russia.

The restaurants called Thats A Burger, Carl replaced out-lets formerly operating under the American franchise Carls Jr. in Yekaterinburg, Perm and Tyumen.

The name of the new burger restaurants is a nod both to the previous incarnation of the fast food outlets and to the Walking Dead meme.

Rick Grimes, one of the post-apocalyptic drama series main characters, has become widely mocked online for the frequency with which he calls the name of his son Carl, as well as the odd variation in his pronunciation of the name.

Carls Junior is a fast-food chain from Southern California, established in the 1940s. It ar-rived in Russia in 2006, with the fi rst restaurant opening in St. Pe-tersburg. In early 2015 the com-pany announced it was closing 30 restaurants for economic rea-sons.

After two years of working with Carls Jr., Russian entrepreneur Sergei Bogodelov was forced to leave the partnership.

In January 2015, due to the

Ratings New World Bank numbers indicate improvements Fast Food Russian entreprenuers got idea from American meme

Russia has climbed to 51st place in the World Banks new Doing Business rankings through a combination of reforms and changes in methodology.

A Russian franchisee of American burger chain Carls Jr. has found a novel way to revive his business in the face of sanctions and the overall economic downturn.

the latest ranking, the govern-ment almost met its target.

Style or substance?One factor contributing to Rus-sias success in the ranking was a change in the methodology used by the World Bank. In 2015, new indicators were added to all the categories examined by the Bank, and Russia scored highly on four out of fi ve of them. In one case, a new index based on the reli-ability of electricity supply and transparency of tariffs was intro-duced.

We measure the frequency of power outages, the duration of possible outages, and how the

sanctions and the exchange rates, the prices of supplied semi- manufactured goods increased more than twofold, said Bogode-lov. As a result the cost of dishes grew by up to 60 percent, while

for an enterprise to function nor-mally the indicator should be about 35 percent. On top of it all the franchise agreement prohib-ited looking for and changing suppliers independently.

In the end he found another supplier on his own.

monitoring systems work, said Saltane, commenting on the early changes to the calculation.

According to these indicators, Russia received the maximum eight points for the category. By increasing the pace of work on simplifying the grid connection procedure, Russia made a record leap of 114 positions in that sec-tion alone.

For similar reasons, Russia rose by 37 positions in the section based on the ease of obtaining building permits. The number of steps required to get a permit has not declined substantially, but this year, a section focused on the quality of building regulation and its implementation was intro-duced, on which Russia scored 14 out of 15 points.

Changes in methodology occur each year so that the rankings can more fully refl ect the process-es taking place in the countries, a press officer for the World Banks Moscow office told RBTH.

According to Andrei Nikitin, head of the Russian governments Strategic Initiatives Agency, the improvement of Russias position in the rankings cannot be ex-plained only by a change in meth-odology, however. If rank de-pended only on the calculation methodology, the changes would be the same at all points, he said.

Areas for improvementThe weakest spot of the Russian economy, according to the studys authors, is international trade, in-cluding the clearance of goods for export; on this indicator, Rus-sia fell from 155th to 170th place.

Trading across borders is one area where Russia should con-tinue focusing its efforts, Sylvie Bossoutrot, Program Leader, World Bank in Russia, wrote in her commentary on the rankings.

However, this will require joint efforts on the part of all stake-holders involved in the process.

Who invented this, Carl?Bogodelovs four new restaurants opened at the end of October. The Americans main request is that I dont use their symbols and illustrations for advertisement and the menu, Bogodelov said.

The new name was suggested by Daniil Golovanov, director of the Redpepper ad agency.

Sure, we knew of the meme Carl but its not true that it was only due to this that we decided to use the name of the character for the restaurant, said Golova-nov. It was important to play with the word burger and in the beginning the phrase That is a burger, Carl was created as a slo-gan for the future establishment. But then we understood that it would be successful for rebrand-ing the name.

Russia Becoming a Better Place for Doing Business

Restaurant Inspired By Walking Dead Opens

The Moscow City financial district hopes to be a hub for business.

Cups, to-go bags and burger boxes feature the restaurants name.

ANNA KUCHMARBTH

IGOR ROZINRBTH

$100 millionis how much billionaire Alisher Usmanov will invest in eSports tour-nament organizerVirtus, making it the world leader.

$26 millionis how much Usman-ovs longtime business partner Yury Milnerinvested in Super Evil Megacorp earlier this year.

Up to 40% per year is how much the Russian eSports market is projected to grow in the long term, according to research by Virtus.

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Arctic a Chance to Form Pan-European Unity rbth.com/531811Special Report

ALEXEI LOSSAN RBTH

Russia is renewing an effort to claim a vast territory on the outer margin of the Arctics continental shelf, but it isnt the only country interested in the regions newly accessible wealth.

THE ARCTIC: A NEW GEOPOLITICAL FRONTIER

As the Arctic ice cap continues to melt, Russia is taking moreactive steps to clearly defi ne its presence and role in the north. After 14 years, the country isrenewing an effort to claim a vast territory on the outer margin of the Arctic continental shelf abut-ting the Russian land mass.

In early August, Russia submit-ted to the U.N. a revised applica-tion to claim a 1.2-million-square-kilometer (463,000-square-mile) underwater territory extending more than 350 nautical miles from the coast, according to an an-nouncement posted on the web-site of the Ministry of ForeignAffairs.

For justifying its claim to this territory, Russia used a large col-lection of scientifi c data, accu-mulated over the course of many years of Arctic research, the an-nouncement read.

The potential economic bene-fi ts to Russia of claiming this un-derwater region are practically

incalculable.The Laptev Sea, as has already

been proven, has a diamond canal on the surface of its shelf, which will allow Russia to become even more competitive with other countries in the production of di-amonds, said Vera Smorchkova, professor of labor and social pol-icy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

The profi table shipping lanes of the Northern Sea Route run through the area, and geological

assessments showing that the sea-bed contains almost 30 percent of the worlds unexplored natu-ral gas reserves and 15 percent of its unexplored oil reserves.

This is not the fi rst time Rus-sia has made such a claim. The country applied to gain posses-sion of a smaller part of territo-ry on the Lomonosov Ridge in 2001, but did not have required proof that the territory was an

extension of the continent and belonged to Russia, Smorchkova said.

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea allows coun-tries to expand their economic zones outward from the visible coastline, provided that the sea-bed beyond their bounds is a nat-ural extension of the continental margin. In its application, Rus-sia lays claims to the Lomonosov Ridge, Alpha Ridge and Chukchi Cap, and to the Podvodnik and Chukchi Ocean Basins separat-ing them.

Political implicationsThe decision to expand the shelf margins is not only of a geo-graphical and economic nature, but it also risks becoming a po-litical issue, noted chief analyst at UFS Investment Company Alexei Kozlov.

Canada, Norway, Denmark and the United States can also po-tentially claim Arctic territory.

Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the U.S. should be prepared to stand up to Russia in this matter.

Russia has been aggressively pushing its claims to the Arctic, especially the resource-rich con-tinental shelf. It now has an Arc-tic Command to strengthen its military presence in the region, said Royce during hearings on the matter in August.

The U.S. and others border-ing the Arctic must maintain a united front against Moscows ag-gressive ambitions toward this vital region, he said.

Protecting all resourcesEcologists believe the political ambitions of all the countries vying for infl uence in the region

goods from Asia to Europe. A con-tainer ship traveling from Shang-hai to Rotterdam via the Arctic takes three weeks, whereas the same trip via the Pacifi c, Indian and Atlantic Oceans requires more than fi ve.

To protect commercial shipping vessels using this route, Russia must increase its number of ships, planes and personnel in theregion.

But of course, it is also extreme-ly important for Russia to ensure the safety of its own territory. Not only commercial vessels will use this corridor. American nuclear submarines with strategic and cruise missiles on board can and do move under the ice of the North Pole.

Additionally, the path across the Arctic is the only one that will allow Tomahawk missiles to hit Russian missile silos in Sibe-ria.

The need to protect the Rus-sian mainland and its militaryinfrastructure is, of course, where all these Arctic countermeasures stem from the missile defense and air defense systems, fi ghter interceptors on the Arctic islands and the constant patrolling of ocean waters by Russian subma-rines.

And, for the Russian strategic nuclear deterrence systems, just as for their U.S. counterparts, the path over the North Pole is the shortest, most reliable andefficient.

Does this military buildup mean that the Arctic become the latest standoff between Russia and NATO? Not necessarily. Both sides are quite well aware of the power of the other, and the need to play it safe.

For the moment, there will be no heavy artillery and armored combat vehicles at the Arctic gar-risons, and the number of Rus-sian troops posted there will be very small only up to 150 peo-ple per garrison, depending on the location and size.

However, until agreements are reached about control of Arctic resources, both on the continen-tal shelves and under the ice, the possibility of a confrontation will remain, and Russia must be pre-pared to protect itself.

Viktor Litovkin is a military ana-lyst for Russian news agency TASS and a retired colonel.

At a recent meeting of the Russian Geographical Society, Russian De-fense Minister Sergei Shoigu noted that 700 million rubles ($12 million) has already been spent on a long-term plan to clean Soviet-era scrap metal from the Arctic, and that as part of the work, society members had reclaimed 5,000 rusty barrels from regions islands.

While this work is indeed noteworthy, it isnt just altruis-tic. The clean-up is part of the Defense Ministrys plan to es-tablish a network of military bases on Arctic islands. There is already a base on KotelnyIsland, part of the New Siberi-an Islands archipelago, andsimilar bases are planned for Wrangel Island, Mys Shmidta, Chukotka and the Kuril Islands in the Far East. It was reported earlier that Russian military bases would be established on the Franz Josef Land and No-vaya Zemlya.

According to Shoigu, all the bases will be operational by 2018, and a new airfi eld in Tiksi, one of Russias northernmost port cities, is scheduled to open a year later. This airfi eld, which is located in the permafrost zone, will be designed tohandle frontline aircraft, pri-marily fi ghter interceptors, as well as to create conditions for temporary basing of strategic bombers.

Similar airfi elds are being es-tablished on the Kotelny Island, on the Novaya Zemlya archi-pelago and on Alexandra Land, which is part of Franz Josef Land. By the time the project is completed, Russia should have a total of nine updated and re-constructed airfi elds in the Arc-tic, most operational by 2017.

So why, after years of neglict-ing the Arctic, is Russia rees-tablishing its military presence there?

First of all, the Arctic Ocean is a treasure trove of natural re-sources. Second, the Northern Sea Route, which thanks toclimate change is now passable practically year-round, is the shortest and most economical-ly sound route for delivering

VEIWPOINT

The Reasons Behind Russias Military Buildup in the Arctic

New Atomic Icebreaker in DevelopmentRussian designers are working on a new type of atomic icebreaker that will make it possible to work in the Arctic year-round. According to in-formation from the St. Petersburgbased Krylov State Research Cen-ter, which is designing the ship, the basic model has already been com-pleted, and the engineering plans are currently being developed.The new icebreaker will be able to break ice more than 12 feet thick.In 2015, Russia launched its flagship diesel-electric icebreaker, Ilya Mu-romets, the first in a series of four. These ships are also planned for use

in the Arctic as auxiliary vessels. Russia currently has the biggest ice-breaker fleet in the world, with 40 ice-class vessels.The size and sophistication of the Russian fleet was critical in Rus-sias inclusion in a new Arctic Coast Guard, announced Oct. 30. The new organization will be made up of ship from eight Arctic countries. In announcing the organization, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Paul Zukunft said: Russia has the preponderance of the resources when it comes to the Arctic domain, he said. So its critical to have them at the table.

threaten its unique habitat, and that the region should become a specially protected international zone instead. The region is home to unique species, in particular walruses and polar bears.

The melting of Arctic ice opens the broad expanses of the north-ern seas, making them vulnera-ble, said Vladimir Chuprov, di-rector of the Greenpeace Russia energy program. Millions of peo-ple are calling on governments to create an international reserve territory around the North Pole, in order that this water area re-mains untouched by industry and the nature remains wild.

Moreover, there is no econom-ic sense in extracting oil from the Arctic shelf, since there are no technologies for drilling for oil in icy conditions at great depths. Economists and geologists are speaking about this more and more, including those from Rus-sia.

In a comment to RBTH, the press office of the Russian Em-bassy in Washington, D.C., said it sees the Arctic as a territory of dialogue and cooperation.

We recognize that all our ac-tions in the region should be reg-ulated within the framework of international law, the statement said. Russia consistently oppos-es the politicization of interna-tional cooperation in the Arctic. Success can be achieved only when the Arctic states are unit-ed and act collectively. The future of the region, the implementation of environmental protection mea-sures and the improvement of conditions for residents of the Far North shouldnt depend on extra-regional events.

Next stepsRussias application for its claim to the Arctic territory will not be reviewed in the near future for procedural reasons, but will be included in the provisional agen-da of the 40th session of the Com-mission in February/March 2016, according to United Nations dep-uty spokesman Farhan Haq.

Millions of people are calling to create an international reserve territory around the North Pole.

The potential economic benefits to Russia of claiming this underwater region are practically incalculable.

HOT TIMES FOR HOT TIMES FOR COLD WATERSCOLD WATERSAS CLIMATE CHANGE MAKES THE ARCTIC MORE ACCESSIBLE, COUNTRIES

THAT BORDER THE REGION ARE STAKING CLAIMS TO ITS RESOURCES

ViktorLitovkin

ANALIST

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RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESSection sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russia www.rbth.com Special ReportDudinka on the Yenisei: The Gateway to Norilsk rbth.com/49389

Sergei Chicherin

SCIENTIST

cade ago, it becomes clear that the ice area has decreased sub-stantially.

On the one hand, it stimulates commercial interest in the Arc-tic, since it is cheaper to trans-port goods on the ice-free water. On the other hand, this water causes land loss, eroding the shoreline.

This warming also causes per-mafrost to retreat. This is a real threat that we cannot help tak-ing into account when we are talking about the construction of

For modern scientists, global warming is not a hypothesis, but a com-monly acknowledged

fact. The most important evi-dence of this warming in the Arctic region is a reduction in the area of sea ice. For exam-ple, if you compare the sea ice area in September of this year with the indicators from a de-

VEIWPOINT

What Global Warming Looks Like in the Extreme North

new infrastructure in the Arctic.We have already been ap-

proached by investors who want to construct a railway in the sub-arctic regions of Yakutia. These projects have been designed for decades, but what will conditions for work be like here in 50 years?

We are trying to answer these questions, but we cannot have a clear understanding of the cli-mate of the future. We can only talk about possible scenarios of climate change and try to pre-pare, to adjust ourselves to these changes. Mankind is yet not able to regulate the natural processes at this scale.

Sergei Chicherin is a deputydirector of the Voyeikov Main Geophysical Observatory.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin has admit-ted that Moscow has been too slow to fi nd alternative supplies of equipment for offshore oil pro-duction and needs to cooperate with other countries that have experience in this area to fully develop its energy resources, In-terfax news agency reported.

Due to sanctions imposed on

Russia is looking for new sources of technology for offshore oil production to fill the gap left by sanctioned firms from the United States and the European Union.

Russia for its role in the confl ict in eastern Ukraine, the Ameri-can and European companies that have traditionally served as part-ners for Russian energy fi rms in the Arctic are prohibited from providing such services. As a re-sult, Russia must develop such technologies on its own, or look for new partners from Asian countries unaffected by sanctions.

At the moment, however, the price of oil has made exploration in the Russian Arctic less attrac-tive for any potential partners.

The development of offshore fi elds has been stalled not only by sanctions, but also by a sharp drop in oil prices, said Ilya Bu-

turlin, managing director of trust management company Hedge.pro. With the current state of theenergy market, expensive devel-opment in the Arctic is simply unprofi table.

Going it aloneWhen sanctions were first im-posed in 2014, Russian oil major Rosneft in partnership with American fi rm ExxonMobil had just discovered the Pobeda oil fi eld in the Kara Sea and drilled a well. After the introduction of sanctions, however, ExxonMobil had to suspend its participation in the project, which caused major difficulties for the Russian fi rm.

Offshore drilling equipment has never been produced or even designed in Russia, said Georgy Vashchenko, head of operations at Freedom Finance Investment Company. For its production and use to be economically viable compared to imports, it must be produced in large quantities, in-cluding for deliveries abroad.

However, according to Pyotr Dashkevich, an analyst with in-vestment company UFS, the ac-tual impact of sanctions on the development of offshore fi elds is not as signifi cant as the effect of the fall in oil prices.

Many of the projects an-nounced were attractive due to high energy prices, he said. Now that the price of oil has fallen, the situation has changed, Dash-

Low Prices Strike a Blow to OffshoreEnergy Exploration

Russian firms are unable to attract partners for exploring energy resources in the Arctic at current prices.

TATYANA RUSAKOVASPECIAL TO RBTH

kevich said, noting that many contracts with Western partners had been signed before sanctions were imposed and, accordingly, do not fall under the restrictions, but almost all of these projects have been delayed or abandoned, because they are no longer prof-itable.

A search for new partnersAt the beginning of 2015, Rus-sias Ministry of Industry drafted a plan for import substitution in the oil and gas industry, but ac-cording even to this document, the share of imported equipment for offshore projects can be re-duced to 6070 percent only by 2020, so Russia is unable to re-ally consider going it alone to de-velop these Arctic resources.

Before the introduction of sanctions, Russian companies had

cooperated with the American, Norwegian and Italian suppliers, but now China and South Korea are also being named among po-tential partners, said Buturlin.

According to him, companies such as General Electric are now ready for the localization of in-dividual equipment for Russian offshore drilling vessels, but there is no demand as long as the price for Russias benchmark Urals crude remains low.

Dashkevich said that compa-nies from Europe and the U.S. remain the most interesting for Russian fi rms as partners because they have the experience of work-ing in the Arctic. Although Asian companies may be interested in supplying equipment and provid-ing subsequent maintenance, they are likely to have had only local experience, he said.

billion tons of oil are estimated to lie in blocks of Arctic territory in the Kara and Pechora Seas controlled by Russian oil major Rosneft.

is how much Royal Dutch Shell has invested in developing an explor-atory well in the Chukchi Sea. The project has been plagued by pro-tests and bad weather.

21.5

$7 bn

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Siberian Lakes Hint at Major Climate Problems

For decades, researchers at Tomsk State University in Siberia have been studying the subsoils of the West Siberian subarctic. The focus of their work has been thermo-karst lakes bodies of water formed by permafrost thawing. These lakes are sources of car-bon dioxide, and recently theyve begun to grow rapidly in size. Some are difficult to recognize on satellite imagery when com-pared to images from only a few years ago, and in certain areas the lakes coastlines have shifted by 210 feet in just two or three years.

The soil organic carbon, also known as peat, transforms into carbon dioxide the fastest while in water, said Sergei Kirpotin, head of Tomsk State Universitys BioKlimLand research center. Over 80 percent of subarctic Si-beria is covered by thermokarst lakes, but the scale of the carbon dioxide flow still has not been evaluated by anyone, and neither has the chemical composition of the water.

While studying the lakes, the scientists discovered that small-er lakes those with a surface area of less than 1,000 square feet, which are virtually undetectable by satellites and do not show up on any maps emit several times more greenhouse gases than big-ger lakes. There are millions of these tiny lakes in the Siberian tundra, and due to their negligi-ble size, they were not taken into account within existing carbon exchange models until recently.

Because of the increasing thaw-ing of permafrost in West Sibe-ria, scientists fear that the bigger thermokarst lakes could soon break up into numerous smaller ones. This could lead to a ten-fold increase of greenhouse gases and dissolved organic carbon emissions into rivers and the Arc-tic, said Kirpotin.

Bigger worries offshoreAn even more serious problem than the thermokarst lakes is the processes that occur within the Arctic continental shelf. Scien-tists at another university in Tomsk, the Tomsk Polytechnic University, have been studying these changes, and note that car-bon emissions in the form of methane and carbon dioxide are already having a signifi cant im-pact on Earths climate.

Five years ago we discovered

that the massive methane emis-sions that occur in the seas of the western Arctic are about two times larger than emissions in all the worlds oceans, said Igor Semiletov, a geochemist at the Pa-cifi c Oceanological Institute and Tomsk Polytechnic University.

In 2014, an international re-search team led by Semiletov set sail to the Arctic Ocean on the Oden icebreaker science vessel. The researchers were the fi rst to closely examine the waters of the

outer West Arctic continental shelf at depths below 150 feet. The scientists discovered that car-bon emissions in the shelf zone are much more intense than ex-pected. Up to several hundred ounces of methane per square yard are emitted daily, which demonstrates that the underwa-ter Arctic permafrost has been severely degraded. About 700 such methane holes, each up to half a mile in diameter, have been found in the shelf.

We are fi nding more and more evidence confi rming our hypoth-esis about the leading role of the Siberian continental shelf in changing Earths methane bal-ance at the present time and for at least the past 400 years, said Semiletov.

Subsurface lakes in Siberia are releasing carbon dioxide and methane.

Bodies of water discovered under the permafrost and in the outer Arctic shelf are releasing an increasing amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

YANA PCHELINTSEVASPECIAL TO RBTH

Russian Investors Claim North Sea FieldsRussias L1 Energy has bought oil and gas fields in the North Sea from Germanys E.On for $1.6 billion, business daily RBK reported. The deal makes Russian investors the owners of the largest oil and gas fields in the North Sea, with 43 mining licenses.This is the largest transaction con-ducted by a business under the control of Russian businessmen in recent years, said Ivan Kapitonov, associate professor at the Institute of Civil Service and Management at the Russian Presidential Acade-my of National Economy and Public

Administration. L1 is controlled by billonaire Mikhail Fridman, the owner of financial cor-poration Alfa Group. As a privately held company, it has managed to avoid the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and E.U. against Russian state-owned banks and energy firms.Nikita Kulikov, C.E.O. of consult-ing company Heads, noted that the transaction is a kind of compensa-tion for L1, which was earlier forced to sell its North Sea gas fields to the Swiss chemical company Ineos under pressure from the U.K.s De-partment of Energy.

Scientists discovered that carbon emissions in the Arctic shelf zone are much more intense than expected.

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Veto Rights in the U.N. Compel Governments to Compromise rbth.ru/533991Opinion

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THE ISSUE WAS SENT TO PRESS ON NOV. 9

THE U.S. ELECTORAL MATCH-UP THE KREMLIN ELITE WOULD LIKE TO SEE

RUSSIAS EFFORTS IN SYRIA NO WORSE THAN OTHERS

If the Kremlin elite could cast a ballot in a U.S. presidential election, it would probably rel-ish the chance to vote for Don-ald Trump. In the real world, how-ever, things are far more complicated. What does the cur-rent election season mean for fu-ture relations between Washing-ton and Moscow?

Casual observers could be for-given for imagining that the Unit-ed States has a semipermanent election cycle. With still more than 13 months to go before Barack Obama relinquishes the White House, it already feels like the campaign has dragged on for an eternity. Russians can only mar-vel at the showbiz-style U.S. elec-tion process.

An American iron lady? Bill Clinton remains popular in Russia. Rightly or wrongly, hes

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter got it exactly right in his recently published plan for the future of Syria when he called those involved in the peace process proud nations that claim to want peace butrefuse to cooperate with oneanother.

Carters statement didnt sin-gle out just one of the players. He was referring to all the negotia-tiors in the Syrian tragedy, includ-ing the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.

Indeed, the confl ict in Syria, de-spite being a civil war, is one of the most internationalized, and all its foreign participants claim to be acting in the interests of peace and Syrias prosperity.

Almost none of these claims are sincere.

Carters proposal suggests co-ordinating the actions of the big fi ve outsiders in such a way that Russia and Iran would pressure President Bashar Assad, while the U.S., Turkey and Saudi Arabia would rein in the armed opposi-tion, nudging both sides towards peace. In its main points, Carters plan coincides with the propos-als of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One of the most disputed un-

Bryan MacDonald SPECIAL TO RBTH

Dmitry Babich SPECIAL TO RBTH

perceived as having been less hos-tile to the country than his two successors, George W. Bush and Obama. Although his wife, Hill-ary Rodham Clinton, is now the bookmakers odds-on favorite to take the Democratic nomination, Hillary is not Bill and times have changed. Its impossible to imag-ine the former Secretary of State laughing and joking with Vladi-mir Putin as her husband used to do with Boris Yeltsin. In fact, Mrs. Clinton is regarded as a hardliner on Russia. Indeed, shes criticized Barack Obamas han-dling of the Ukraine crisis and proposed far stronger measures to support Kiev.

Of course, Clintons position might well be pre-election blus-ter, designed to cast her as a strong fi gure. Hoping to become the fi rst female president, Clin-ton probably feels that she has to appear even tougher than her male opponents at times. In that regard, shes borrowing from the playbook of Angela Merkel and

Margaret Thatcher, two phenom-enally successful female leaders. The Kremlin naturally fears that a new Clinton presidency would be far more hawkish than the pre-vious Clinton administration.

The elephants in the roomCurrently, Marco Rubio is the long-term favorite in the race for the Republican nomination. The 44-year-old Florida senator is po-tentially even tougher on Russia than John McCain, a notorious tormentor of Putins government. In fact, Rubio, who has strong links to the Tea Party movement, has even won support from for-mer McCain donors such as George Seay and Jim Rubright, according to Fox News.

In May, Rubio penned a Polit-ico op-ed in which he called for further NATO expansion, includ-ing the accession of Ukraine. The Kremlin would welcome that like it would greet snow in July. Re-sponding to the idea that NATO might send miltary advisors to

knowns in the Syrian equation, however, is the moderate oppo-sition, made up of groups in-volved neither in the barbarities of ISIS nor in the Syrian govern-ments heavy-handed militaryresponse to the insurgents. The United States and the E.U. seem to have put all their eggs into this particular basket, claiming atdifferent times that its various factions fi rst the Syrian Na-tional Council, later the Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army are the only le-gitimate representatives of the Syrian people.

Russias position has its incon-sistencies, too.

We are ready to support the patriotic Syrian opposition, in-

cluding the Free Syrian Army; we are ready to provide them with support from our air force, Rus-sian Foreign Minister Sergei Lav-rov said recently. But we are de-nied the information of American experts on where the terrorists are and where we can fi nd the patriotic opposition members.

Meanwhile, a lot of Russian military specialists and Duma deputies claim that the moder-ate Syrian opposition is a myth, arguing that this opposition has shown itself incapable of stem-ming the expansion of ISIS and is believed to survive only thanks to the support from the U.S. and the E.U.

I still dont understand whom these migr opposition guys rep-

resent, said Semyon Bagdasarov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Middle East Studies and a former Duma deputy, not-ing that some of the opposition groups have their offices abroad. If they dont represent a real force in Syria, let them drinkcoffee in Ankara or Doha, Bag-dasarov said.

However, the Russian Foreign Ministrys actions seem to some-what contradict this pessimistic view. Over the last three years, Sergei Lavrov has hosted sever-al rounds of talks in Moscow be-tween members of President Assads government and repre-sentatives of the secular opposi-tion. The leaders of both theSyrian National Council and the Syrian National Coalition were invited to and visited Moscow, even though while in the Russian capital they showed their dis-agreement with Russias arms supplies to the Syrian government and with subsequent Russian strikes against what Moscow calls terrorist-operated targets in Syria.

Assad, who visited President Putin in his Kremlin office inOctober, appeared to be much more in his element in Moscow than the Syrian oppositionmembers.

After Assads visit, comment-ing about the seeming contradic-tions in hosting meetings with

Ukraine, Alexander Grushko, Russias envoy to the Atlantic Al-liance, told news agency Tass that Moscow will take all measures, including military-technical, to neutralize (the) possible threat

(the Baltics) to get involved in NATO, seemingly unaware that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were already members. Obvious-ly, the Kremlin would prefer that Carson were right.

On the other handWhile the Republican fi eld is in-credibly competitive, Clintons only realistic rival for the Dem-ocratic nomination appears to be Bernie Sanders, the 74-year-old senator from Vermont. A self-styled democratic socialist, he has been a consistent critic of U.S. foreign policy, and has described the N.S.A. as being out of con-trol. While that might suggest he is more amenable to Russian in-terests than Clinton, he has strongly supported Obamas pol-icy of sanctions against Russia.

Of course, current positions are based only on opinion polls. The real voting doesnt start until Feb-ruary, when both Democrats and Republicans will begin their pri-mary season. This time eight years ago, Hillary Clinton was almost 30 percentage points ahead of Barack Obama, according to Gal-lup, but we all know that Obama later took the Democratic nomi-nation and eventually the presi-dency. At the same time, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani enjoyed an average 12-point lead at the top of Republican polls over actor Fred Thompson. Ultimate-ly, John McCain was selected.

If Russias leaders could vote, theyd probably back Trump for the Republicans and anybody but Clinton on the Democrat ticket. The Kremlins worst nightmare would be a Clinton-Rubio battle. In such a contest, Russia would make a convenient whipping boy for their foreign policy tussles. Worryingly for Moscow, Clinton-Rubio remains far more likely than Trump or any Democrat al-ternative to Clinton. Russia could easily fi nd itself used as the elec-toral bogeyman du jour. It could be a long year.

Bryan MacDonald is a Moscow-based Irish journalist who fo-cuses on Russias role in interna-tional geopolitics.

If Russias leaders could vote, theyd probably back Trump for the Republicans and anybody but Clinton on the Democratic ticket.

Trump believes Putin has eaten Obamas lunch on Ukraine. Putin has no respect for our president whatsoever, he told Fox News.

from (a) NATO presence in Ukraine.

Most analysts agree that should full NATO membership for Ukraine be proposed, Moscows reaction would be less than pleas-ant.

NATO expansion may be the one topic of agreement between Rubio and his former mentor Jeb Bush, who may yet make an im-pact in the race. Bush views Putin as a bully and has called for larger troop deployments to the NATO-member Baltic states.

Trumping them all?Then theres Trump himself. Al-though the billionaires candida-cy was orignally viewed as a joke, nobodys laughing now. While odd-makers continue to mark him an outsider, the majority ofRepublican voters currently con-sider him the best candidate for the November 2016 election.

Trump believes Putin has eaten Obamas lunch on Ukraine. Putin has no respect for our president whatsoever, Trump told Fox News. Hes got a tremen-dous popularity in Russia, they love what hes doing, they love what he represents.

Earlier, at a press conference in Scotland, Trump said: Id get along very well with Vladimir Putin.

Of course, some U.S. allies in Europe might be alarmed at a putative President Trumps warm feelings towards Russia. This doesnt seem to bother the can-didate, who doesnt have much sympathy for the Europeans. Eu-ropean leaders, Trump said, are dealing with Russia, theyre tak-ing in the gas, theyre taking in the oil. And you know, were mak-ing a big deal out of it.

Trump also believes that Crimea is Europes problem and that the U.S. has no role to play. in the territorial dispute.

In aggregate polling, only Ben Carson presently threatens Trump. Hailing from economically mor-ibund Detroit, the gifted neuro-surgeon is no foreign policy ex-pert . In March , he to ld conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that we need to convince

such diverse fi gures, Lavrov said: Russia never refuses to talk and never declares negotiations im-possible.

The foreign minister added that Moscow would be happy to see new parliamentary and presiden-tial elections in Syria and said that any peace settlement should be founded on the basis of the Geneva Communiqu of 2012. When it was signed, that now half-forgotten document was praised by the U.N.s peace nego-tiator for Syria, Lahdar Brahimi. In Brahimis words, it represent-ed a shared view of Russian and American officials on the Syrian problem and presupposed a reg-ulated political transition in Syria basically what President Cart-er is suggesting now.

By meeting both Assad and the opposition members, as well as hitting the terrorist targets in Syria in a much more effective (or at least more spectacular) way than the U.S.-led coalition, Rus-sia has put itself right in the mid-dle of the Syrian intrigue. Many view it not as a problem, but as a solution. And this is not just a Russian opinion. For example, Iraqi parliamentary deputies this week began to collect signatures on a petition to ask Russia to strike at ISIS positions on Iraqi territory.

Certainly every outside player in the Syrian tragedy has its share of problems and its share of skel-etons in the closet. But Russias share in this case is certainly no bigger than the shares of any of the others, and what Moscow has to offer should at least be given serious consideration.

Dmitry Babich is a political ana-lyst at Sputnik radio.

C O N V E R T I N G M O N O L O G U E SI N T O D I A L O G U E

RUSSIA DIRECT IS A FORUM FOR EXPERTS AND SENIOR RUSSIAN AND INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKERS TO DISCUSS, DEBATE AND UNDERSTAND ISSUES IN GEOPOLITICAL RELATIONS AT A SOPHISTICATED LEVEL.

RUSSIA-DIRECT.ORG

Latest Report

RUSSIA-DIRECT.ORG/SUBSCRIBE

Russias military intervention in Syria has the potential to shift the long-term geostrategic outlook for the Middle East. With that in mind, this new RD report takes a closer look at why Russia got involved in Syria, elaborates on the characteristics of a more proactive Russian foreign policy in the Middle East, and weighs the potential risks and rewards of Russian involvement in the conflict.

RUSSIAS NEW STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

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RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINESSection sponsored by Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russia www.rbth.com CultureThe American Pop Culture Trends Russians Love rbth.com/535713

INTERVIEW OLGA PERETYATKO

The Free Bird of the The Free Bird of the Opera StageOpera Stage

CATCH THE PERIPATETIC

RUSSIAN SOPRANO OLGA

PERETYATKO IN THE ROLE OF

GILDA IN RIGOLETTO AT

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA

THROUGH NOV. 19.

THROUGH NOV. 19GILDA IN RIGOLETTO,Metropolitan Opera, New York NOV. 30 DEC. 26GILDA IN RIGOLETTO,Teatro Real, Madrid DEC. 31OPERA GALA, New Years EveConcert, Shanghai

WHERE TO SEE HERthat I began to feel more or less human again.

Then, you develop a certain en-thusiasm. We invented various odd jobs for ourselves: We set up a quartet and gave little concerts in hospitals and hospices. Weperformed mainly Bach, Mozart, Handel that which is easy to play.

I will never forget: I had 10 euros a week to spend on food. I didnt have a spare 30 cents to buy a coffee from a machine.Experience like this teaches you a lot.

When did you have your first seri-ous performances?When I was studying in Berlin. My fi rst serious director, my fi rst serious project a youth one, of course came in 2004, with Harry Kupfer. We performed Handel in German, only young singers. For two months, we had rehearsals in a castle not far from Berlin, and gave performances. I recently came across a DVD with a recording from that time and thought: Dear God, I hope no one else will see this! From the vocal point of view, it was just baby talk.

After three years at the conser-vatory, I decided that it was time to search for further programs. I realized that there was no point in sitting there for six years and I took part in a lot of auditions for opera studios, for different in-ternship programs. Every theater has one, especially now, during a crisis: young singers, often very good, who cost very little. The-aters get good voices practically for free. Whereas we already had

some money and stage experi-ence.

I had a serious job at the Ham-burg State Opera, where I sang for two years. In the summer of 2006, I attended Accademia Ros-siniana in Pesaro, and in 2007, I performed Desdemona with Juan Diego Florez. Also in 2007, I sang the part of a flower maiden in Daniel Barenboims production of Parsifal. Between those two performances, I took the night train to Paris to take part in Op-eralia and straight afterwards, literally on the next day, went to Pesaro. I was completely exhaust-ed by then because a human body cannot operate under so much pressure for long. My body told me: enough. I think that I made my breakthrough at Pesaro. Since then I have been freelancing, so I am a free agent.

Would you like to be associated with one theater company?No. If life gives you an opportu-nity to be a free bird, you should use it. When you sing in one the-ater company, you have to sing all the parts that you are given.

Usually, singers go for this op-tion at the end of their careers, when they are tired of traveling all over the world all the time. Or once they start a family and realize that it is no longer possi-ble to move from one country to another every three days.

Are audiences in different countries in any way different?Not particularly. In America, they like everything and are not very demanding. They are also very re-sponsive, they laugh out loud, like

in a cinema, theater or at a Broad-way musical; you almost get the feeling they may have brought their popcorn with them.

In Germany, the audiences are the most savvy of all: There are 80 theaters there, they have heard and seen everything, so it is hard to surprise them. In Austria, peo-ple are just very fond of music. In France, they have sophisticat-ed tastes, they want to hear less known or rarely performed piec-es The French are very sophis-ticated listeners, true aesthetes.

You have already performed on the worlds main opera stages. Do you have any dreams left?The main thing is to have good health. All the rest will come. As for dreams I dont have dreams, I have plans. My schedule is full til 2020. Although I do probably have one dream: I would like to do a joint project with an elec-tronic band, like Air. I dont yet know what we could do togeth-er, but I would like it very much.

On a recent visit to Russia,soprano Olga Peretyatko spoke with RBTH about her life abroad, audiences in different parts of the world and making it as a free agent in the world of opera.

Did you dream of becoming a sing-er since you were a small child?No! I dreamed of becoming a bal-lerina. We lived in St. Petersburg, not far from the famous Vagan-ova ballet school. My father sang in the choir of the Mariinsky The-ater, and they all knew each other, visited each other at home. I began to sing at the age of four, at family gatherings, standing on a chair. I always enjoyed perform-ing for an audience. I still do.

Why did you decide to train as a conductor?I entered the conservatory when I was 15, which was a bit early for vocal training. But already then I knew that my life would be connected to music. The fun-damental training I received in choral conducting, the basic music training, helps me a lot in my work, as do my piano skills, and the knowledge of the laws of harmony and a solid footing in solfeggio.

At the age of 21, you moved toBerlin. Did you find living abroad difficult?The key thing is to become part of the European way of life. At fi rst, it was very hard. I had ar-rived with practically no knowl-edge of [German] whatsoever. I entered the conservatory and en-rolled in German classes. It was only after the fi rst eight months

Prepared byOleg Krasnov

There are many similarities in the work of Russian writer Anton Chekov and American playwright Sam Shepard, whose play Fool for Love opened this fall on Broadway for the fi rst time, al-though Shepard may not care to admit it. Shepard recently said about Chekhov that he was not crazy about him as a playwright, but the two share a desire to ex-plore the themes of property, fam-ily and the past.

A more savage orchard?Shepards play The Curse of the Starving Class was described by one critic upon its 1978 premiere as The Cherry Orchard return-ing as farce. Shepard sets his play in an American country house with an avocado orchard that is being bought up by dubious prop-erty developers and lawyers to be turned into low-rent housing.

The constant references to the orchard suggest that Shepard is quite deliberately calling Chek-hovs play to the audiences mind. In both plays, as the critic Ste-phen Bottoms said, the family home is invaded. In Shepards play, the house is literally disin-tegrating; the father has drunk-enly smashed the front door down, which allows the property lawyer and creditors to come in easily. A diseased lamb even starts to live in the sitting room, and at the end of the play, instead of the sound of the tree struck by the axe, as in the Cherry Orchard, we hear a car exploding outside.

Chekhov has his sympathetic usurper, Lopakhin, inside the house from the beginning. He is the fi rst person the audience sees. The owners return, only to be

Theater Playwright draws on Russians work

slowly sidelined. This external march of progress is set against a kind of stasis in the lives of the families. Chekhov shows the old Russian aristocracy, especially in the fi gure of Lyubov Andreyev-na, struggling to adapt to being pushed out of their home by the nouveau riche.

The Curse of the Starving Class is, according to Shepard scholar James A. Crank, a re-imagining of The Cherry Or-chard, but in the context of the United States in the 1970s, and perhaps more cruel and savage

as a result; we are watching poor people and even animals fi ght-ing over space.

Ghosts among us For both playwrights, the home is a battleground, with the attacks coming not just from outsiders but also from within the family itself. This family civil war is waged over the past, which is rep-resented by problematic father fi gures for both authors. In Fool for Love, the father is a ghost wandering around the stage, haunting the present. The ghost of the father says You cant be-tray me! You gotta represent me! Youre my son!

Fathers are also notably absent in Chekhov, and often the family is sent into turmoil by the remov-al of this traditional authority fi g-ure. The death of the father in The Cherry Orchard seems to have precipitated the familys de-cline; he is a symbol of a past that cannot be recaptured.

Shepards fathers may not be remembered with such fondness, but their infl uence is signifi cant.

Echoes of Chekhov in Sam Shepard

Fool for Love runs through Dec. 13 at Manhattan Theatre Club.

The work of the avant-garde American has much in common with that of the iconic Russian, despite the distinct differences in time and place.

OLIVER BENNETSPECIAL TO RBTH

The constant references to the orchard suggest that Shepard is quite deliberately recalling Chekhov.

Restaurants

Average cost per person of a meal in a nice restaurant.

Average cost of getting to or from the airport

Taxis

Rent a car

Average price per kilometer for using Mos-cows car-sharing system, which began operating in September.

Average price of group tour showing the major sites of the city center.

City tours

Tickets to see the world-famous Bolshoi Ballet will set you back less than a visit to Times Square.

The Bolshoi Theater

T RAV E L 2 MO S COW. COMThe Russian ruble has lost around 40 percent

of its value against the U.S. dollar over the course of the last 12 months. The decrease

has made many products and services cheaper for foreign visitors to Russia.

Accommodation in the historic center of the Russian capital has dropped in price considerably over the past year. Now, a room with a view of the ruby stars of the Kremlin towers or over the Moscow River embankment is more reasonable than its been in years.

p g

* Source: Federal State Statistics Service of Russia, Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated, 2GIS. Prices are calculated at the exchange rate on Oct. 7,.2015

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Laika: The Space Dog Who Inspired the World rbth.com/536425Feature

WAR TAX ON THEATER TICKETSURALSKY LISTOK, OCT. 24, 1915The Ministry of Finance has sub-mitted for consideration by the Council of Ministers a plan to es-tablish a special war tax on tick-ets for entrance to public spec-tacles and amusements.The tax will be levied by the Of-fi ce of Empress Maria in its in-terest.

AT THE POST OFFICE CHERNOZYOM, OCT. 25, 1915The new building for the Central Post Office in Penza has been the talk of the town for the past 10 years, but the common mans dream has never been fulfi lled. To visit the post office means to sustain an attack.When you need to come to some window in the office, you are clenched from all sides. And, drowning in your own sweat and that of others, you can breathe a sigh of relief only in the street. Since the beginning of the war, when the number of post office visitors has increased, to conduct postal business is a real ordeal

lin dramas, though there is an oc-casional marvelous fi lm, such as the most recent picture based on Turgenev The Song of Trium-phant Love.

AVIATION COURSE OPENSRUSSKIYE VEDOMOSTI, OCT. 30, 1915The Imperial Aviation Technical School has opened a theoretical course.An opening lecture was pre sented by one of the professors, who told the audience about the history of the teaching of aviation, described the work of pilots and noted the benevolent attitude of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich to aviation.

NEWSPAPERS ON THE TRAMGORODSKOI VESTNIK, NOV. 1, 1915The Petrograd Trade Department has suddenly received a new source of income. A civil engineer offered the city to give him the exclusive right to sell newspapers in the cars of the citys railways.For receiving the concession, the entrepreneur is obliged to pay the city 20,000 rubles a year for a staff of 2,000.

In case of an increase, 2,000 ru-bles for every extra 50 people, ad-ditionally. The concession term is 10 years.

IN THE SOCIETY OF PETERSBURG WOMEN LAWYERSBIRZHEVYE VEDOMOSTI, NOV. 2, 1915Recently there has been noted an increased demand for women lawyers. As a result of this, the society of St. Petersburg women lawyers is planning to open a labor office to open communica-tions between women lawyers and people seeking to hire suchpeople. Currently in St. Peters-burg, there are over 200 women who have graduated from law faculties.

FREE DISTRIBUTION OF WINEMOSCOVSKY LISTOK. NOV. 8, 1915Many owners of vodka distilleries and wine warehouses distribute free wine and vodka products to their employees, which thenre-sell these to other people.A question was raised about passing a law banning the free distribution of alcoholic bever-ages.

Cheap Entertainment and Import Substitutionand blessed is he who has no need to go there.

CRAFTSMEN AND TELEPHONES MOSKOVSKY LISTOK, OCT. 26, 1915The telephones for the needs of the post office and telegraph of-fi ces have mainly been acquired abroad. The question has now arisen about the possibility of producing telephones using local craftsmen. As an experiment, or-ders for telephones have been placed to the craftsmen of Ser-giyev Posad. If these are success-fully carried out, tests will be un-dertaken to produce equipment for the telegraph.

FILMS AND CHILDREN CHERNOZYOM, OCT. 25, 1915A very sad phenomenon can be observed at fi lm theaters on hol-idays. Children, from two-year-olds to those of student age, sit around every family head and his wife and watch harrowing dra-mas.What will the modern fi lm rep-ertoire give them? Due to the lack of scientifi c fi lms, movie theaters fi ll their repertoires with maud-

Prepared byTatiana Shilovskaya

PRESS FROM THE PAST

WHAT THE RUSSIAN PAPERS WROTE ABOUT IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE

Newspapers in the early part of the 20th century played as important a role in informing and entertain-ing the population of the Russian

RBTH insert in the New York Times, Nov. 11, 2015

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