Category: Russian Federation

Turkey Approves Russian Gas Plan

By JACOB GRONHOLT-PEDERSEN

MOSCOW—Russia secured approval from Turkey on Wednesday to build the South Stream gas pipeline across the Black Sea, removing the last major obstacle to proceed with a project that could increase Europe’s dependence on Russian natural-gas supplies.

The move heats up the battle between Russia and the European Union over competing pipelines, especially the European Union-backed Nabucco project, and increases pressure on Ukraine to give Moscow control of its pipeline system.

[SOUTHSTREAM]

Turkey’s approval, given by Energy Minister Taner Tildiz during talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, had been a stumbling point for Russia to proceed with the offshore part of the South Stream project.

Russian state gas giant OAO Gazprom ships most of its gas exports to Europe via Ukraine, but supply disruptions in recent years due to pricing disagreements between the two countries have led Russia to seek to bypass Ukraine and promote new pipelines such as South Stream.

Analysts say progress on South Stream increases pressure on Ukraine. Kiev is pushing for cheaper gas in order to balance its budget.

But in exchange for cheaper gas, Moscow is aiming to gain control of Ukraine’s pipeline system.

South Stream is envisioned to carry as much as 63 billion cubic meters of Russian gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary before branching out to Western Europe.

Gazprom, the main shareholder in the project and a major supplier of gas to Europe, said Turkey’s approval means South Stream will start operating according to plan by the end of 2015. ENI SpA of Italy, BASF SE of Germany and Électricité de France SA are minority partners in the project.

“This is a very good and positive signal for all of us, which undoubtedly will provide stability in energy supplies to the European market,” said Mr. Putin.

A European Commission spokesman played down the impact of the South Stream agreement, which he said “would not affect the existing framework and commitments.”

European officials say that, unlike Nabucco, South Stream hasn’t reached the project stage yet.

Nabucco is the most ambitious and expensive of four competing proposals to take gas from Azerbaijan, and possibly eventually from other countries, into the European Union. But Nabucco’s estimated cost is a potential deterrent for developers of the giant gas field, which lies under the Caspian Sea. A decision on the winning project is expected to be announced in the first half of 2012.

Gazprom has insisted South Stream will be built regardless of talks with Ukraine, but Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller said earlier this week that realization of South Stream depends on the continuing talks with Kiev.

“This all looks like negotiating tactics, as Russia prepares for a new round of talks with Ukraine,” said Johannes Benigni, managing director at Vienna-based research consultant JBC Energy. “I don’t think they need to build South Stream at all.”

Last month, another transit country, Belarus, sold its gas-pipeline operator Beltransgaz to Gazprom in exchange for a major discount on gas supplies. Ukraine is likely to face a similar situation, Mr. Benigni said, adding that with a $15.5 billion price tag on South Stream it would make more sense for Gazprom to invest its money in Ukraine.

The news on Russian progress on South Stream also comes as the Nabucco project, which seeks to carry gas from Azerbaijan and other Central Asian countries to Europe, has faced hurdles. The EU has promoted Nabucco to reduce the bloc’s dependence on Russia but suffered a setback as Azerbaijan recently said it plans to build its own pipeline through Turkey that would run parallel to Nabucco’s planned route.

South Stream has failed to gain backing in Brussels and has still to get exemptions from new EU rules known as the Third Energy Package. The legislation is pushing for more competition in Europe’s energy market and has sparked tensions with Russia as Moscow believes they undermine its own investments in the 27-nation EU, including South Stream.

—Laurence Norman and Alessandro Torello

via Turkey Approves Russian Gas Plan – WSJ.com.

December 31, 2011
Turkey’s Akkuyu 1st nuclear unit seen complete 2019

ANKARA Dec 16 (Reuters) – Construction of the first unit of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant is expected to be completed in mid-2019, and the global financial crisis will not hit costs of the project, the Russian contractor company said on Friday.

Last year Turkey awarded Russia’s Atomstroyexport a contract to build its first nuclear power plant at Akkuyu on the country’s Mediterranean coast.

“We are planning to finish construction of the first unit in mid-2019. Pre-construction work will start in the second half of 2012, and will take two years,” Akkuyu NGS Power Production general manager Alexander Superfin told a press conference in Turkey’s capital Ankara.

Atomstroyexport set up Akkuyu NGS Power Production in 2010 to build and operate the 4,800 megawatt nuclear power plant. The total investment is seen around $20 billion.

The agreement includes a tariff package that guarantees Turkey’s state electricity corporation will pay $12.35/KWh for 70 percent of the power produced by two of the plant’s four 1,200 MW units, and the same price for 30 percent of the power produced by two other units for 15 years after commissioning.

Turkey plans to construct three nuclear power plants of up to 5,000 MW each.

South Korea’s Kepco pulled out of negotiations for a second plant at Sinop after Turkey refused sovereign guarantees for the plant’s output. Japan’s Tepco pulled out of the planned project in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. (Reporting by Mustafa Seven; writing by Ece Toksabay; editing by Keiron Henderson)

via Turkey’s Akkuyu 1st nuclear unit seen complete 2019 | Energy & Oil | Reuters.

December 19, 2011
Anna Politkovskaïa ….. A Bitter Taste of Freedom

By Farah Souames*

Algiers, November 21, 2011

Morocco World News

The Russian investigation committee recently accused and arrested a suspected killer of the opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaïa, who was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 2006. But investigators have remained silent about who might have ordered the killing of Politkovskaïa, a sharp critic of the Kremlin and its appointed strongman in Chechnya. The alleged assassin was previously considered a potential witness, according to Vladimir Markine, spokesman for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office. Markine announced: “The Russian investigation committee accused Lom-Ali Gaïtoukaïev for the murder of Politkovskaïa, for reasons relative to her professional activities.” Mr. Gaïtoukaïev has previously declared that an amount of $2 million had been paid for the murder.

Mr. Markine said another suspected killer has been accused, Ibraguim Makhmoudov, Gaïtoukaïev’s nephew. On September 2011, the investigation showed information proving that Lom-Ali Gaïtoukaïev organized the murder by forming a group which included former police officer Dmitri Pavlioutchenkov, former policeman Sergueï Khadjikourbanov and Makhmoudov.

A court found the Makhmoudov brothers and Sergueï Khadjikourbanov not guilty in 2009, but the Russian Supreme Court overruled the acquittal and sent the case back to prosecutors.

During her fearless reporting career, Politkovskaïa, 48, reserved her most vicious criticisms for Ramzan Kadyrov – Chechnya’s Kremlin-appointed president. Kadyrov has denied involvement in her death. Over the last three years, however, several other enemies of Kadyrov have met brutal deaths, most recently the human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who in July was abducted from her home in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, and shot.

A Bitter Taste of Freedom ………

Los Angeles-based, Marina Goldovskaïa’s latest film, A Bitter Taste of Freedom, is a soulful homage to her best friend Anna Politkovskaïa. She tells Politkovskaïa’s life in detail from childhood to the moment it was tragically claimed by a murderer. The murder itself and the investigation, which is still underway, have not been included in the film.

More revealing than previous films about Politkovskaïa, recipient of an Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, A Bitter Taste of Freedom blends bits of contextual archives and photos from the field with diacritic footage the filmmaker shot in Anna’s home during their many years of heart-to-heart conversations, beginning in 1990. Goldovskaïa became close to Politkovskaïa while making A Taste of Freedom about Anna’s husband Sasha Politkovsky, a prominent TV journalist known for his frank commentaries on contemporary politics. (She tracked him for six dramatic weeks during the height of popular demonstrations in the Soviet Union, when the final vestiges of totalitarianism gave way to the epoch-shifting imperatives of glasnost and perestroika.)

Colleagues, family members, former editors and even Mikhail Gorbachev appear onscreen to eulogize the fallen writer and activist, but the film’s best moments are with Anna herself, a charismatic presence admirably devoted to both her personal causes and the well-being of her two children, despite the constant threats on her life.

Marina Goldovskaïa has made 35 films and has earned numerous awards, including the PrixEuropa, Golden Gate Award, Golden Hugo, Joris Ivens and Silver Rembrandt. In 2006, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award for the Art of Documenting History from the Russian Association of non-Fiction Film and TV. She heads the Documentary program at UCLA Film School.

A Bitter Taste of Freedom, a joint project between Russia and Sweden, premiered in New York on August 20 and enjoyed huge success with the audience. It may compete at the 84th Academy Awards if the International Documentary Association approves the biopic for the program.

Goldovskaïa’s film shared the award for Best Documentary with Slovak-Czech film, Nickyho Rodina, at the Montreal World Film Festival in August. It will be appearing in the Oscar lead up program Docuweeks in New York and LA.

A total of seven Russian films were included in the program of Montreal’s film festival this year, including Once There Lived a Woman, a drama made by Andrey Smirnov, and Africa: Blood & Beauty by Sergey Yastrzhembsky, a former press secretary of President Boris Yeltsin.

Media freedom in Russia ………….

Anna Politkovskaïa’s assasination in 2006 remains of the strongest examples of the risks faced by journalists in Russia. Media freedom is an imaginary front that exists only when government interests are not the subject. Curious journalists censor themselves because of the risks of going beyond red lines.

Since 2000 during the Putin-Medvedev era, nearly 122 journalists have been found dead under varying circumstances such as car accidents or homicides Perpetrators of such crimes are rarely punished by a tolerant legal system.

In the beginning of 2000, Putin authorized a technical system of wire trapping for enabling the police to control internet use and require that internet providers cooperate with government surveillance.

* Farah Souames is Morocco World News’ correspondent in Algeria

Photo by: N. Kolesnikova / AFP

www.moroccoworldnews.com, November 21, 2011

November 21, 2011
Voice of Russia starts broadcasting in Istanbul

Voice of Russia starts broadcasting in Istanbul

November 20th, 2011 – 13:08 UTC

by Andy Sennitt.

The Voice of Russia, which airs in important capital cities and centres around, the world has begun broadcasting from its newly opened office in Istanbul. The head of the radio station, Andrei Bystritskiy, went to Istanbul to introduce Voice of Russia’s Istanbul branch office and showed the radio station’s programming office to the journalists at a press conference held at the radio station’s office.

Mr Bystritskiy stated that broadcasting in the Turkish language will be done in Istanbul, while other programmes will be broadcast from Russia. Bystritskiy noted that their radio broadcasts in Turkish are to be carried out in collaboration with their business partners in Istanbul.

Voice of Russia is on air seven days a week on FM 101.4, which Radio Kuzey also uses. Broadcasts start at 3.00 pm and end at 4.10 pm. The broadcast stream consists of daily commentary on events in Russia and around the world, a Russian language course and news programmes.

via Voice of Russia starts broadcasting in Istanbul.

November 21, 2011
Yandex.Maps is now in Turkey with Panoramas!

by Fırat Demirel on November 15, 2011

Yandex entered into the Turkish search engine market as a new player but brought along many services, as well. One of the most important ones among these has been the map services by Yandex and now Yandex.Maps is in Turkey. Today at 14:50, Yandex Turkey is going to be introduced with a presentation at Webrazzi Summit but we are sharing the details in advance.

Russian service provider will be providing Turkish users with a country map, street view (panorama), satellite view and the updated traffic news. Harita.yandex.com.tr is the address of the Yandex.Maps service where you can find the maps and satellite views of 81 provinces, 947 districts and 40 thousand villages/quarters.

Resembling Google Maps, the map service of Google, and providing an easy usage, Yandex.Maps will also be ready for Turkey on popular mobile platforms very soon.

Panoramas and Shooting Method

Yandex Panoramas, which works just as Google’s Street View does; consists of the street shots taken by Yandex in İstanbul (3.205 km of roads, 447.812 photos, 111.953 panoramas) and Ankara ((1.706 km roads, 187.972 photos, 46.993 panoramas). Beside the street shots, Yandex has also taken images of Marmara Sea as well as some special locations (which you might guess about) and 360 degrees of special shots.

If you have recently seen a car with a camera passing outside your house (in İstanbul and Ankara), this was probably a Yandex car. To be honest, we could not see the car, either but apparently Yandex took great shots around our office, as well

The cars, which we found out to have a compass, a GPS and a resolution of minimum 10 megapixels, started to work at early hours on bright sunny days when the roads were empty. In narrow streets where it was impossible to go through with a car, they used bicycles with cameras or shot with hand cameras and the photos were combined into 360-degree-panoramic views. 4 different resolutions were used when uploading so as to let faster photo viewing.

The photos were combined automatically in accordance with geographical coordinates and the plates and faces were blurred (as per the law).

Yandex.Traffic and Data Resources

This is one of the features of Yandex.Maps which will be most used in İstanbul. Yandex.Traffic will calculate the average index of traffic density and show the traffic data in green, red and yellow. Traffic density index is a rating system between 0-10, 0 being clear and 10 being highly dense. For example, if the traffic density index is 7, Yandex tell us that the trip will last twice as long as it does at clear times.

Yandex Turkey shares the details of this service,too. We find out that this traffic data is provided by the GPS-equipped cars of the companies which aim to become partners with the service and great vehicle fleets. The coordinates, speed and directions info of these cars are communicated to Yandex.Traffic server and the most updated traffic info is compiled. As a result, the movement graph of the car is created by the analysis program of the system depending on the data acquired.

Yandex states that this service also abides by the confidentiality procedures (keeping the info about the car, the car owner or the driver confidential).

The Java and Android applications of Yandex.Traffic will soon be available for your mobile device on haritalar.yandex.com.tr. There is not an iPhone application yet (it will be available soon, though) for Yandex.Traffic and time will show if it will be able to compete with İBB Trafik but considering the fact that Java-based telephones are quite common in Turkey and the number of smartphone users is increasing each day, I reckon that Yandex.Traffic will gain popularity as Yandex grows.

As for the effect of Maps services on the organic search rate of Yandex, we have to wait and see what will happen.

via Yandex.Maps is now in Turkey with Panoramas! | Webrazzi Global.

November 15, 2011
Turkey-Russia relations and missile defence

The ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) pursuit of a more muscular and independent foreign policy has helped change the perception of Ankara in Moscow over the past ten years from being in step with NATO aims to a more independent foreign policy actor.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul (left) greets Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Turkey-Russia economic relations are a key component of bilateral ties. Reuters
“There have been some remarkable milestones that affected Turkish-Russian relations and paved the way for further co-operation,” Habibe Ozdal, a researcher at the International Strategic Research Organisation, specialising in Russia and Black Sea Studies, tells SETimes.

One of these significant milestones was the Turkish parliament’s refusal to allow the United States to invade northern Iraq from Turkish territory in 2003.

After this decision, “Ankara started to be evaluated as an independent actor in the region. From this standpoint, Moscow began to evaluate Ankara as an important actor that can stand for its national interests, even against a longtime ally,” according to Ozdal.

On the local level, growing bilateral trade and tourism has contributed to the thawing of relations. However, close relations with Moscow are still new, and the two sides are working to build trust at the upper echelons of government.

“It [Turkey] has been a member of NATO since 1952, that together with the EU integration process, has built up a certain level of trust [with the West] … between Turkish policy spheres, state agencies, security, military and business elites,” European Geopolitical Forum founder Marat Terterov tells SETimes.

“They don’t have the equivalent of that in the Turkish-Russian relationship. They are in the process of building it.”

One potential point of contention is Russia’s stringent opposition to the NATO decision to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system, which includes the forward based radar on Turkish territory.

“While [most] Russians generally accept the US and NATO concern about countries with missile capability, such as Iran, they do not see that capability emerging in the near future,” Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-proliferation senior fellow Nikolai Sokov told SETimes.

“According to Russian assessments, Iran is still pretty far from long-range missile capability. Hence they suspect that the real reason for missile defence is not the reason that is publicly declared.”

The recently concluded agreements for the launch of the newer Phased Adaptive approach with Turkey, Romania, Poland and Spain has been met with sharp criticism in Moscow.

“This is not about the radar itself — it clearly does not have capability vis-a-vis Russia. It was rather seen as further evidence that NATO proceeded with implementing missile defence plans without co-ordinating with Moscow,” Sokov said.

“People are making the argument that the missile defence would undermine the Russian strategic potential,” Pavel Podvig, director and principal investigator of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, tells SETimes.

“There is no way the system can be a threat to anyone,” according to Podvig, but “the military and defence agencies [in NATO member states] are using it as a pretext for new programmes and for more money.”

This content was commissioned for SETimes.com.

October 21, 2011