MOSCOW, February 14 (RIA Novosti) Kosovo's independence will breach international law / British secret services may have helped Saakashvili remove opponent / India's ONGC officially claims partnership in Sakhalin-III / United Aircraft-Building Corporation charts ambitious plans / Chinese automaker Chery to organize full-scale production in Russia / The Kremlin disbands Young Guards
Vremya Novostei, Komsomolskaya Pravda
Kosovo's independence will breach international law
Yesterday Serbia demanded that the UN Security Council hold an emergency meeting to discuss the intention of Kosovo's Albanian separatists to proclaim independence in the next few days.
The Albanian-dominated region is expected to declare its independence on Sunday or Monday, and the majority of EU countries have said they will recognize Kosovo's sovereignty. Pristina has a program of festivities to mark the day, but experts say Kosovo's sovereignty will breach international law.
Breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union - Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transdnestr and Karabakh - are closely following the events in Serbia, while the separatist Basque movement ETA has said that the example of Kosovo proves that "Basques' struggle for independence is not futile." The Spanish press has called on Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to more energetically take Russia's side.
Russia believes everything possible should now be done to prevent a negative scenario and that the Belgrade-Pristina talks, interrupted in late 2007, could still be resumed.
If Kosovo is allowed to proclaim independence, the Old World will be recarved beyond recognition, starting with Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Corsica and Belgium.
Vladimir Ovchinsky, doctor of law and former head of Interpol's Russian office, said: "The actions of Kosovo Albanians, the Taliban and Al Qaida appear to be coordinated. Islamists from the Middle East have become firmly established in the province."
Alexander Karasev, doctor of history at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the European Union bears a grave responsibility for the current situation. "The EU has lost the opportunity to really assist in settling the Kosovo crisis, or at least in alleviating it," he said.
"In 2005 and 2006, when the international community was only trying to convince Serbs and Albanians to negotiate their problems, Brussels should have offered Serbia EU membership and granted it and Kosovo multibillion loans on privileged terms," Karasev said. "In that case, Serbia and Kosovo would have joined the EU as a united country, the province's economy would have been revived, and Serbs and Albanians would have become easier to talk to."
But now "the EU is fighting off a crisis and must think not about Kosovo's independence, but about ways to overcome the split in its ranks," he said.
Kosovo has been a UN protectorate since the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia ended a conflict between Albanian separatists and Serb forces in 1999.
Moskovsky Komsomolets
British secret services may have helped Saakashvili remove opponent
The sudden death in London of 52-year-old Badri Patarkatsishvili, a businessman and politician full of life and energy and with the best medical help in the world, seems strange. But for President Saakashvili, who is anticipating parliamentary elections with a feeling of terror, the death of his mighty opponent was surprisingly timely. An oligarch whose fortunes were six times Georgia's annual budget was a deadly threat to him.
Even in emigration, Patarkatsishvili, who was well-connected in the West, posed a danger for the Georgian president. Irakly Okruashvili, a former defense minister who is now seeking a political asylum in France, said that Saakashvili had instructed him to physically do away with the oligarch.
The other day the Georgian newspaper Alia published a transcript of a conversation Patarkatsishvili had with Erekle Kodua, an official of Georgia's Interior Ministry. The businessman told the official that he had a large amount of incriminating information on Saakashvili: "The only person that stood in his [Saakashvili's] way was me. Me alone. He feared my television company [Imedi] and my money."
Now if it was not a whim for the Georgian authorities to get rid of the oligarch, but a matter of life and death, what practical means did they take to do this in London? The only probable way would have been for Georgian secret services to have cooperated with their British counterparts. It is no secret that certain Western elements seek to keep Saakashvili in power. It is not impossible that they decided to help him by removing his main opponent.
In the view of Kakha Kukava, a parliamentary deputy from the Democratic Front and one of the leaders of the united opposition, "it is still too soon to draw far-reaching conclusions - an investigation must be carried out and an autopsy performed. But still, too many strange deaths have occurred in London recently."
Andrei Lugovoi, who was friends with Patarkatsishvili and who, together with the Georgian, was accused by Russia in 2001 of arranging an escape from custody for Nikolai Glushkov, a former first deputy director of Aeroflot, "was shocked by the news."
"I am shaken and devastated," Lugovoi said. "We talked by telephone a weak ago, and nothing suggested trouble. He never suffered from heart problems. I think his death is largely due to events in Georgia over the past two to three months."
Kommersant
India's ONGC officially claims partnership in Sakhalin-III
Apart from Russian state-controlled companies Gazprom and Rosneft, India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has officially become a candidate for participation in the Sakhalin-III oil and gas project.
Sources in Russia's Industry and Energy Ministry and Ministry of Natural Resources say the chances of ONGC getting a stake in the project are quite high.
The company is already participating in the Sakhalin-I project (20%). ONGC's management has repeatedly declared its intention to buy the largest possible stake permitted by Russian legislation in Sakhalin III - 49%. So far Russian authorities have been reacting positively but indirectly, without promising anything. The situation has now changed.
The Sakhalin-III project comprises four blocks: the East-Odoptinsky, Ayashsky, Veninsky and Yuzhno-Kirinsky blocks, the latter block being the largest one. The blocks' resources are estimated at more than 600 million metric tons of oil equivalent. Russia's major state-controlled oil producer Rosneft is already developing the Veninsky block.
Now Gazprom and Rosneft are competing for the three other blocks of the Sakhalin-III project. A Kommersant source in a ministry handling the sector says that a decision to transfer Sakhalin-III to Gazprom "is nearly adopted." According to him, Gazprom alone will select partners for developing the blocks.
Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources notes that no mechanism has been worked out yet for the transfer of mineral deposits to new owners. "We would prefer to sell Sakhalin-III though an investment auction," the ministry says.
According to Valery Nesterov, an analyst at the Troika Dialog investment company, the cost of developing deposits is rising alongside their depletion. "For this reason, Russia's policy towards foreign partners may be mitigated," the expert says. India has sizeable financial resources and it has already announced its intention to invest up to $25 billion in the Russian oil and gas sector, Nesterov recalls. However, at present Indian projects can be regarded as a long-term prospect, he said.
Denis Borisov of the Solid investment company says that India's oil consumption exceeds production. Demand for oil is growing every year and India is not likely to meet its needs from its own resources. According to him, not only economic but geopolitical factors, including Russian-Indian cooperation in the defense industry sector, could make Russian companies choose an Indian partner. However, he adds that although many Russian companies are looking into possibilities to implement projects in Southeast Asia, very few of these projects have been realized so far.
Gazeta.ru
United Aircraft-Building Corporation charts ambitious plans
First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, in charge of the real sector of the economy, has ordered the state-owned United Aircraft-Building Corporation (UABC), which consolidates assets in the manufacture, design and sale of military, civilian, transport, and unmanned aircraft to boost its capitalization from 100 billion rubles ($4.07 billion) to 1 trillion rubles ($40.65 billion) by 2025.
Analysts said they were skeptical about such plans.
It took energy giant Gazprom, the world's fourth largest company by value, 15 years to attain $400 billion capitalization. However, UABC plans seem far-fetched because the corporation largely lacks up-to-date automated equipment.
Analysts reacted critically to UABC's plans because many of its plants manufacture only a few aircraft per year.
Ilya Frolov of Rye, Man & Gor Securities said the plants had potential, and that UABC could boost annual production to 200 aircraft if it attracted investment.
He said UABC's production potential made it possible to manufacture 730 Sukhoi SuperJet-100 medium-haul airliners and about 220 Sukhoi Su-35 Super Flanker fighters from 2008 to 2017.
According to Frolov, such plans are feasible because the Russian aircraft industry boosted production by 18.6% in January-September 2007.
He said the domestic market did not need so many 730 SSJ-100s, and that Moscow still had to convince foreign customers of their effectiveness.
Vedomosti
Chinese automaker Chery to organize full-scale production in Russia
China's Chery Automobile plans to build a plant in the Russian Republic of Udmurtia, in the Volga region, to produce cars, engines, gearboxes, drive gear, and axles.
Chery President Yin Tongyao and Alexander Volkov, president of Udmurtia, discussed the possibility yesterday.
The Chery management is holding meetings with regional authorities and potential partners, according to the company's representative in Russia.
Dmitry Rumyantsev of SOK Group, which owns the IzhAvto plant in Udmurtia, said no agreements had yet been reached, and that the plant was considering different options for increasing production, one of them being cooperation with Chery.
IzhAvto's annual capacity is 200,000 automobiles, but this year's plan stipulates production of only 71,000, Rumyantsev said.
Sergei Sanakoyev, head of the Russian-Chinese center for trade and economic cooperation, said Chery had long been looking for new cooperation opportunities in Russia. In his opinion, it has been disappointed by the joint project with Avtotor in the Kaliningrad Region, Russia's exclave on the Baltic Sea, because it was not granted the promised privileges for the import of auto components.
Ruslan Sadykov, head of Avtotor-UV, said his company produced 42,000 Chery cars in 2007 and has signed a cooperation contract for 2008, adding that production would grow. In his opinion, IzhAvto is one of the options the Chinese are considering.
Yevgeny Bogdanov, an auto analyst at A.T. Kearney, a global strategic management consulting firm, said Russia's Economic Development and Trade Ministry had stopped accepting requests for organizing foreign car assembly plants under privileged conditions last year.
He said Chery should not start the project in Utmurtia because its investments would not be recouped without privileges. Chery would spend too much on the delivery of auto components to Izhevsk, he said. Besides, labor is so cheap in China that it would be ineffective to assemble Chinese cars in Russia.
Moreover, IzhAvto assembles KIA cars, and the South Korean partner is unlikely to be happy to have a rival in such close proximity, the analyst said.
Mikhail Kontserev, head of the St. Petersburg-based Olimp dealership, which last year opened a Chery salon, said Chinese producers are scrutinizing the Russian market where cheap Chinese cars enjoy high demand.
He said Chery would have sold many more cars in Russia if not for limited production facilities and delivery problems. A full-scale plant would solve all of these problems, Kontserev said.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Kommersant
The Kremlin disbands Young Guards
The Nashi (Us) movement, a young supporter of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, has been reformed. The Young Guards movement is next in line, according to a statement made by its political leadership yesterday.
Observers interpret this as a growing crisis in the pro-Kremlin youth movements.
"The constituent stage is over; we have won the street and learned to win elections and propel talented young leaders to government bodies," the Young Guards' statement says. "But the new period demands more from us."
Young Guards will be no longer used as extras in street battles against the opposition.
Ivan Demidov, head of the movement's coordinating council, told the business daily Kommersant: "We have learned the art of controlling the street. Now we should master more intelligent behavior."
According to Demidov, the project was designed as a protest against the "orange threat." "The streets will not remain empty," he said, "but we no longer need to organize [street] protests against our political opponents."
"In the past, rough action was needed, including street protests and persecution of opponents," a source in United Russia told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "Today violence has become unfashionable; it is now the time for lawyers."
He said changes in Young Guards were the movement's response to "a demand for more ideological action" adjusted to the liberal, intelligent image of the main presidential candidate, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Political analysts say that the curtailment of the pro-Kremlin youth project may take rather long.
Political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky said: "The Kremlin no longer needs it; the 'orange' danger has been dealt with. But youth hordes cannot be disbanded overnight because this would create problems for their Kremlin managers. Therefore, the liquidation of the movement will proceed as a reform, with curtailed allocations and stripping of many functions."
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