MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) The man who opened Russia's eyes has died / Karadzic's extradition shows Lugovoi's extradition to U.K. impossible / TNK-BP's top management may quit en masse / Shell finds new asset in Russia / Bailiffs detain foreign debtors in Russia / Innovation drive on the wane in Russia
Gazeta.ru
The man who opened Russia's eyes has died
Dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who has been generally viewed as Russia's honor and conscience, has died. There is no place for ideals and heroes in a country to which a gas monopoly is more important than its writers and scientists.
Solzhenitsyn was Russia's conscience because he had the courage to stand up to the communist regime, was persecuted, and wrote truthful books about the Gulag and the Russian Revolution. He moved against the current, which many thinking people in Russia identified with the Absolute Evil, even though it was clothed in ideals shared by millions.
The situation has changed. Although civic freedoms have been eroded in Russia and economic freedoms curtailed, the current authorities are incomparably more tolerant than Stalin or even Brezhnev were. It has become much easier to resist them, because we have more freedoms and the regime's persecution mechanism is almost idling. Besides, the country has no global goals other than the semi-mythical Strategy 2020.
For the first time in years, if not centuries, people's traditional alienation from the authorities has been complemented with relative economic prosperity and the absence of a clearly formulated development goal. These are ideal conditions for diluting a nation that has not been cemented by common interests or clear ideals.
It is difficult to become a moral authority in a country where Gazprom is advertised as the national possession, and where non-voting for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and non-participation in the presidential elections are considered an act of moral courage.
An irreconcilable fighter against communism, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a much greater moral authority in the Soviet Union than in modern Russia, which has no communism and in which he almost became a supporter of the authorities, for the first time in his life.
The dissident writer accumulated his moral capital before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. His death has left us in a moral desert where the lost nation will have to look for new moral guidelines, create new moral oases, and encourage the development of new moral authorities.
Solzhenitsyn was never listened to or heard less than in his last years. This fact alone serves as a diagnosis for Russia.
Izvestia
Karadzic's extradition shows Lugovoi's extradition to U.K. impossible
The extradition of Radovan Karadzic to the Hague Tribunal appears to be an act of national humiliation. Serbia did not give up its compatriot because foreigners have an indisputable right to prosecute the Serb warrior, or because the Serbs are unable to establish his guilt themselves. Serbia traded Karadzic for the pitiful slops offered by Europe. We may be in the 21st century, but this still looks like the slave trade.
Karadzic's fate brings to mind Andrei Lugovoi, whose extradition Britain is demanding more stubbornly than the English football team attacked the Russian goal at Luzhniki stadium. The notorious Lugovoi, with his dark biography, is not a figure to invoke sympathy, and his membership in the Russian State Duma hardly does that body credit. The polonium traces may be more convincing than the testimony of Karadzic's rivals, but it doesn't matter; Russia does not extradite its citizens abroad.
This is not a question of whether the "polonium suspect" Lugovoi is the new Ramon Mercader (murderer of Leon Trotsky). It is a question of his Russian passport. This doesn't mean the Russian state is shielding criminals, but that it should be Russia who prosecutes Russian citizens. If a country delegates its powers abroad, then it's obvious that it is not fully a country. If it cedes judicial authority, why not cede other branches of power? Why not ask foreigners to elaborate a new code of laws for Russia or invite them to rule the country, as it happened in the Baltic states? Why not hire foreign officers to lead the army, as in Georgia? By doing so, a country admits the failure of its state and enters the list of second-rate powers.
Kommersant
TNK-BP's top management may quit en masse
James Owen, TNK-BP's chief financial officer, is quitting TNK-BP - the first member of the company's top management. He said the shareholder conflict in the company was preventing him from performing his official duties.
According to unofficial information, Owen, who has held his post since January 2006, has forestalled developments: as agreed between TNK-BP board chairman Mikhail Fridman and BP chief executive Tony Hayward, all top managers are expected to quit the company when an independent general director arrives. The agreement may be formalized before the end of the week.
"James acted a little hastily," said a source close to TNK-BP shareholders. "But this is understandable: he handles financials and his reputation is very important for him, but it appears the company's entire top management could be changed soon."
Another source said that the oral agreement to settle the conflict reached last Wednesday by Mikhail Fridman and Tony Hayward is now being given a roughing treatment. "The basic talks are to be completed within the week," he said.
A source close to TNK-BP shareholders said the issue concerns a new general director. But sources familiar with the terms of the agreement add that "the process is too complicated" to foresee a review of the agreement.
TNK-BP's management members are in two minds about the prospects of quitting.
"I am not going to leave the company," said one of the top managers.
"If I have to quit, I will not take legal action," said another.
Thirteen out of the company's 14 senior managers also hold key positions in Russia's TNK-BP Management.
But Alexander Rappoport, managing partner of the corporate law firm Rappoport and Partners, is confident that the termination of work contracts with the agreement of the parties will not lead to legal complications.
Alexei Kokin of the Metropol brokerage foresees problems for the company when the upper management is replaced. "The departure of the entire team could mean a drastic turn in TNK-BP's strategic development," the analyst said. He believes in the current situation on the oil industry personnel market the company will have its work cut out to recruit a Russian segment of the top team, if only by re-employing the same people, but in new posts.
Vedomosti
Shell finds new asset in Russia
For several months now, Shell has been negotiating a swap of its stake in the Salym group of deposits for shares in Britain's Sibir Energy. Unnamed sources in foreign media point to Shell's 50% stake in Salym Petroleum Development (SPD) joint venture, the remainder of which is held by Sibir Energy.
The SPD is one of the fastest-growing oil companies in Russia: in the past four years it has increased its output 117.5 times over. Shell's stake in the joint venture could be worth $2 billion (or $5.2 per barrel of proven and probable reserves), believes Otkrytiye analyst Natalia Milchakova. A lower estimate - $4 per barrel - is given by Kapital analyst Vitaly Kryukov.
Sibir Energy was worth $4.6 billion at yesterday's share price. Shell could get 30% of the company's stock in exchange for half of the SPD (if it used its stake as payment for Sibir Energy's newly issued stock), analysts calculated.
If the calculations are right, Shell could share control over Sibir Energy with majority shareholders Shalva Chigirinsky and Igor Kesayev. Their current interest is 47%. But if Sibir issues an additional $2 billion to be paid for by Shell, then the businessmen's stake will shrink to 34%. And Moscow's stake will drop to 13% from the current 18%.
Opinions differ on whether Shell stands to gain from such a swap. Milchakova believes the multinational company would rather have a stake in the SPD, which is an operating company. In that way Shell could consolidate the company's reserves on its books.
Kryukov disagrees. In his view, Shell could profit from the deal. Through Sibir Energy it could gain access to the capacities of one of the company's main assets - the Moscow oil refinery (Sibir has a 38% stake in it, or 51% of the votes), which is an additional advantage when oil prices are falling, he said.
Such a deal would offer benefits to Sibir as well, Kryukov said. In cooperation with Shell, it has better chances of fighting off claims by state companies, such as Gazprom Neft. True, there is no 100% guarantee, the analyst said. A glaring example was control over Sakhalin-II, which Shell had to sell to Gazprom under pressure from environmental regulators and law enforcement authorities.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Bailiffs detain foreign debtors in Russia
Foreigners coming to Russia will be unable to return home unless they pay all their debts owed within the country.
Russia's Federal Service of Court Bailiffs yesterday stopped Georgian national Elshan Eyupov, who had served a prison sentence for murder but failed to pay 300,000 rubles ($12,820) in moral damages to relatives of the girl he had killed, from leaving Russia.
In the first half of the year, the service used this rule against over 7,000 Russian debtors and has now decided to apply it to foreigners.
Lyubov Zhokina, acting chief of the service's department for media relations, said nationality does not matter in this case, and that the rule would be applied to violators of both criminal and administrative laws.
This means that foreigners can be detained on the Russian border if they have not paid even a minor fine, for example a traffic ticket.
Analysts say Russian businesses may use the rule against unprincipled foreign counteragents.
Maxim Chernigovsky, chief analyst at the Vegas Lex law firm, said: "In other countries, they usually arrest the debtor's property, which is a more effective instrument. Detaining foreign debtors in Russia is something new in the practice of court bailiffs."
Lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky said: "The absence of Russian citizenship will not protect foreigners who violate Russian legislation."
He thinks the practice could also be applied to illegal migrants.
"Violators can be detained in Russia until they repay their debts," he said. "After that, the authorities will have the right to extradite them and deny further entry into the country."
Vedomosti
Innovation drive on the wane in Russia
Which nation is the most creative and offers the most nonstandard solutions? Not Russia.
According to the "World Patent Report: A Statistical Review (2008)," published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), applicants from Japan, the United States, South Korea, Germany and China accounted for 76% of the total number of patent applications filed worldwide in 2006. Applicants from Russia made up only 1.6%.
The report is based on 2006 figures, the last year for which complete worldwide statistics are available.
The share of Russian patent filings has decreased from 1.8% in 2000 to 1.65% in 2006, which is only slightly more than applications from the Netherlands (1.56%) and Switzerland (1.4%), but fewer than patent filings from Britain and France (2.3% and 2.5%, respectively).
Nevertheless, Russia has retained its position in the group of the world's top 10 countries by patent applications.
The number of patents filed in Russia has grown from 23,377 in 2000 to 27,884 in 2006.
Judging by the WIPO report, an increase in innovative activity was the largest in China, which had previously been considered only capable of copying other countries' achievements. The number of patent filings in China grew by 30% annually between 2000 and 2006.
China's secret is respect for foreign brains: non-resident filings account for 98.8% in China, where non-residents received over 56% (32,000) of Chinese innovation grants.
Only 9,568 such grants were issued in Russia, the majority of them to Russians, who also received 19,641 grants and patented 29,059 innovations abroad, which is more than they did in Russia (27,884).
Viktor Naumov, a partner at the Salans law firm, said the number of patent filings was growing faster than innovative activity in Russia.
Russian companies and especially state agencies usually allocate smaller funds for patents than foreign companies do, and do not finance major patent research. Large Western companies also invest in patent monitoring, he said.
Leonid Gokhberg, director of the Institute of Statistical Research and Knowledge-Based Economy at the Higher School of Economics, said the main reason for the small number of patent filings in Russia is stagnation of innovation activities in the economy and a depletion of technological potential in science.
Creativity, which has been an element of Russian nature, could benefit the national economy if the authorities simplify the procedure of receiving patents and create a copyright protection system. Otherwise Russian brains will continue to emigrate, including to China.
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