Moscow Rules

2008-12-13T17:28:00.000+03:00

Hat-tip to Siberian Light - Wordle is a cute little app that turns your blog into a word picture. Here's a picture for this blog:

The end-game may really be in Ukraine

2008-10-28T00:34:00.002+03:00

I have been very busy on real-world misery to light-heart post on this personal blog; but have done some economic and political stuff on our work blog: http://www.mmdblog.com/. My Twitter feed, however, on the right-hand of this desktop, captures the daily, bi-polar pendulum I curently experience in my life: between slightly unreal, expat whimsy and deep despair at the state of Russia's/Eurasia's economy and my increasingly shitty place in it...

I wanted here though to record my admiration of a post from a work-mate, which I think gets the essence of what is happening now in Ukraine.

As I wrote on my facebook posts for friends:

"My occasionally, breathtaking-brilliant, if absurdly young, colleague in Ukraine - Mykhaylo Petechuk - flashed a snap-note to clients today which we repeated on our blog.There is no better distillation of the gap in 'Western' and Russian thinking than attitudes to Ukraine.

Western politicians admire the 'plucky little democracy, holding out against an increasigly evil (sic) empire'.

Russia sees political juvenalia - egged on by its old Cold War adversaries (too cowardly to take on Russia except by proxy) whose toddler-fractiousness would be amusing, save for the 'big boys' toys' NATO promises Ukraine.

Anyone who knows me knows I love Ukraine as a place and as a people. I abhore its corruption - *much* worse than Russia's - gangsta politics and a political class that real democrats would rightly treat with contempt.

Headlines in the west today suggest the IMF has saved Ukraine. As Mykhaylo writes, that is far from true. Russia is right, the west wrong, on Ukraine"

Machiavelli Redux: a triumph of Putinista Politiking?

2008-09-03T16:56:00.003+04:00

I was planning to post about Woodrow Wilson today; and what I've learned about America's dysfunctional relationship with the outside world (and how that odd double-think of imposed values and self-obsession comes from; and Russia in particular, because of him...

...but I was woken up - I am on vacation at the family's second home in Provence - with an urgent message about matters in Ukraine. For much of the last two years people like me have banged-on, with gentle tedium, about the possibility of an 'Orange-Blue' coalition between (useless) President Yuschenko and the Party of the Regions.

Was it in the last parliamentary elections, or the one before that, where the prevailing wisdom was that such political expediency would never wash with the Ukrainian people?

Well now the Orange Witch (as someone wicked, I forget who... once named her), has entered into the bastardised union of orange and blue. And *very* clever it is too.... A master-stroke! It was clear for the last two years that only through Orange-Blue union could Ukraine become less kindergarten and more grown-up country. But we never expected this coalition. And it is brilliant!

To use President Medvedev's choice phrase (said yesterday, of President Saakashvili of Ukraine), Victor Yuschneko is 'political dead meat'.

Timoshenko - who is as politically promiscuous today as she was..ahem... ideologically promiscuous in her Komsomol days - has for the last 2-3 weeks been rumoured in Kyiv (and I was there each week) to have 'done a deal with Moscow'.

*This*, I think, is the deal:

- A less than excruciating deal on the 2009 price of gas (Moscow's side)

- Death to the idea of NATO or EU membership (Yulia's)

- Moscow's clout and Rinat Akhmetov's money to be withdrawn from Yanukovich - a nicer bloke than you might think, but poor chap can't run a bath let alone a political party fit for government - and put behind Yulia...

- Moscow to have a free hand on the issue of Transnistria; which it shaping up nicely to be the next 'frozen conflict' which Moscow will (a) de-frost and settle (b) in Moscow's favour, (c) while America is too politically weak, and by extension therefore the EU, to do anything about it.

- Yulia to be propelled to being PM in power and in office on a more 'Moscow-friendly' trajectory; rejecting the US/EU encroachment into Ukraine. And thus set up to squish Yuschneko in the Presidential.

Result? A government in Kyiv that can actually govern; Ukraine definitively out of Washington's and Brussel's orbit and - sweetest of all - the second of the most jarring of the Color Revolution Presidents brought low and made powerless, in prelude to their final humiliation and removal.

This summer and Autumn Russia is resplendent and crushing a weak USA and spineless, compromising EU. C'est magnifique et, alors, c'est bien la guerre...

The case for Appeasement

2008-08-20T14:51:00.006+04:00

from the London Daily Telegraph, 17th August 2008

I love reading the Spectator, although I instantly recoil at almost all its judgments. A friend and colleague directed me towards an article which is online now (and I guess will be in the dead-tree version tomorrow).

It is a good article, although as you might expect from a Russophile – which is what westerners accuse me of being, to the bewildered amusement of my Russian staff – I do not share all the author’s conclusions. I do, though, agree with him on expansion of the UN Security Council (with rapid adoption of QMV and an abolition of the veto – yes, I know, it’ll never happen) and the replacement of G8 with G12 (plus India, China, Brazil and Turkey).

But to the theme of his article: Georgia. All of us, however near or far from the Russia-NATO debate, have had our own little moment of intellectual ferreting-about, trying to find le mot juste for the causation of ‘Russia’s Most Excellent South Ossetian Vacation’.

Understanding the ebb and flow of Caucasus politics is somewhat like trying to understand the Schleswig-Holstein Question; of which Lord Palmerston memorably said: “Only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein Question. The first was Albert, the Prince consort and he is dead; the second is a German professor, and he is in an asylum: and the third was myself - and I have forgotten it”

Georgia. South Ossetia. Really it is all the fault of that Woodrow Wilson chap. Possibly the biggest brain ever to occupy the Oval Office; and yet his two terms in office were blighted. He was the one who, during and in the aftermath of the First World War, got everyone so excited by the idea of Idealism in foreign policy. It has been torturing us ever since.

Indeed, for a long time one might have argued that the Wilsonian / ‘American’ school of foreign policy nicely contrasted with the Palmerstonian or ‘British’ view. Put it another way: what Lord Palmerston would have said was “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests": Georgia is not our ally and we have no interests there. Leave it to the Russians.’

On the other hand, Palmerston was the ‘ultimate pre-emptionist’, not adverse to gunboat diplomacy, which is a sabre-rattle too far just now (and worryingly apropos GW Bush).

Self Determination as a key-determinant of national sovereignty – and the existence of a state that ought to be recognized - was a Wilsonian idea. He espoused it because, inter alia, he hated empires. His was that whole end-the Empires vibe that the USA later rammed down British and French throats after World War II – and thus flowered, as we swapped colonial power for US dollars – democracy and stability in Africa and Indochina…well, OK, not quite.

Today in international law, we tend to assume four things for a sovereign state to exist a (1) land; with (2) settled borders; (3) settled people and a form of (4) government. Sean has been writing very convincingly about the West’s turning a deaf ear to the Ossetian voice, and that that we only hear the view from Tbilisi.

On a Wilsonian view of the world, South Ossetia has a right to be treated as being capable of independence. The same line we used, of course, for Kosovo (actually the issue was more ragged over Kosovo than over South Ossetia). The Russians aren’t especially mad at us Westerners for our hypocrisy. Quite the contrary, I am sure they love rubbing our noses in our own ‘International Rule of Law’ shit.

Self-determination, however, is proving a most crappy touchstone for international affairs. We loved it for Kosovo; hate it for South Ossetia and scarcely know what to think about Transnistria or Nagorny-Karabakh; and run for cover if you mention Flanders; Basque or Chechnya.

It is time to ditch self-determination as a theory in international realpolitik. At best all you get are smaller and smaller countries scarcely able to govern themselves, who have no international voice and who are over-dependent on big states (the USA, Russia or the pseudo-state of the EU). It was self-determination which brought back to us the Georgian state (which was snuffed out by the Russians in 1801, but made virtually unsustainable by Persians from the Middles Ages onwards).

I don’t much care whether Georgia is free of Russia or not (there, I've come out, I've said it). I care even less about South Ossetia. But I think ‘Sovereign Montenegro’ a ridiculous idea; Kosovo toxically the more so and have no wish to see a new-born state called South Ossetia. Let the Russians have it! One sure way to take the pressure off of the Western Alliance is to give Russia all the rope it wants.

That said it sucks to be Belorussia or Ukraine. And I see that Minsk is getting it in the neck for having been just a little too reticent recently.

Should we care if Russia moves to take the Crimea? Why? We know that Russia knows it can’t reverse the lost Warsaw Pact countries’ membership of NATO so, therefore, where really is the self-interest in our trying to control events east of NATO, that pose no threat to NATO territory? Just because Appeasement failed in 1938 doesn’t mean this time it isn’t in our best long-term interests.

Dumb and Dumber?

2008-08-19T15:43:00.002+04:00

Otherwise known as Georgia and Serbia.

Ah... poor Serbia. Always seemingly grabbing defeat from the jaws of whatever...

This piece on the Business New Europe wire caught my eye today:

Moscow accuses Serbia of supplying Georgia with arms
bne
August 19, 2008

The Russian Ministry of Defence has accused Serbia of being one of the countries that has supplied arms to the Georgian military prior to the recent conflict in Ossetia, Serbian media reports. The Russian's say some of the weapons were made in Serbia's Zastava factory in the central Serbian town of Kragujevac, according to reports from the BBC. "I stated that it was a bad idea selling weapons to a country that was in conflict with Russia, our biggest ally," former Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic told the BBC, pointing out that the government (in which he had been foreign minister) had initially blocked the deal, and then approved it following a strike by workers at Zastava Weapons.

However, Zastava Weapons Director Rade Gromovic said Draskovic's claims are "groundless.""I don't know how our Kalashnikovs got to Georgia. Maybe Georgia got them from Croatia or Bosnia, whose territorial defenses, during the former Yugoslavia, possessed such weapons. Zastava Weapons and the Serbian state cannot however tell former Yugoslav republics, which have long been independent states, what to do with their military surpluses," said Gromovic.

There is almost a mathmatically circular brilliance to how screwy that is, don't you think?

South Ossetia is Kosovo; Georgia is Serbia. Serbia is friendless other than Russia so, natch, Serbia 'accidentally' arms its only friend's most troublesome enemy. LOL

In search of truth and balance

2008-08-14T01:04:00.002+04:00

Posted elsewhere by Exile:

Something about August (western newsrooms, which have anyway been cutting editorial budgets, being lightly staffed); the distraction of the Olympics and a misplaced admiration for being 'democratically elected' did throw western media off its game. No doubt about it; in the first days of reporting the South Ossetian conflict zone.

The early coverage in the west was awful and biased. And Saakashvili's acting skills did bludgeon fair reason from western editors' minds.

But Russians should please remember the west's press *is* free and, like a plane in turbulence tends back towards the centre of its gravity and even flight, eventually western journalists' fondness for fact and accuracy, reverts back to (on a good day) journalistic balance.

The London Times today has two pieces, by significant UK writers, Russians should approve of: http://tiny.cc/avNV1 and the sublime Simon Sebag-Montefiore: http://tiny.cc/5WRn1. The Russian point of view is being heard. And is respected.

If Moscow stops shouting, for a moment, about western media's bias, it might even hear its more reasonable, and increasingly Moscow-attuned, voice.

Russia has won the military battle. It can still even win the longer-run war for the respect from the west it reasonably deserves.

Why, on balance, I think Russia has acted broadly correctly

2008-08-12T21:16:00.000+04:00

On Sunday, I wrote elsewhere (amid a spittle-storm of British Russophobia):

"The view here from Moscow is interesting inasmuch as there is little jingoism from the Russians I know who are jaded by the Caucasus [well, that was Sunday, by Monday morning, while I detected little jingoism, it was plain there was a massive wall of Russian outrage at the attack-on-civilians Georgia has - please let's remember this *fact* initiated last week, unprovoked. Prime Minister Putin - Blair to Medvedev's Queen of England - has tapped brilliantly into this. The guy *does do* domestic PR brilliantly well].

"The West can do nothing. It holds no cards whatsoever at this poker table. It needs Russian oil and gas; it needs Russian leverage over Iran and, indeed, the USA needs Russia's cash to buy US Treasury bonds: the recent Fredie Mac and Fannie Mae crisis revealed Russian sovereign funds were huge holders of their bonds and US Treasuries.

"The four 'frozen conflicts' (Abkhazia, Nagorny-Karabakh and of course South Ossetia; and Transnistria, on the Ukrainian border) may have been defrosted by Kosovo, that's true. There are now plenty of opportunities for Moscow to feed the EU, cold, its Kosovo solution back to them, frozen-conflict-by-frozen-conflict.

"VVP et al have hated Saakashvili for years and have long wanted to take him out; of all the colour-revolution leaders on Russia's borders, he was always too close to Washington. And Saakashvili has *had* to snuggle up close to Washington because he is not nearly as popular amongst Georgians as his suave English-speaking appearances on CNN might have you believe.

"Russia, I think, really *does* want a return to the status quo ante (South Ossetia within Georgia, completely autonomous and [but totally] under the Russian sphere of influence).

"It does *not* want to annex South Ossetia, with Russian North Ossetia. The Kremlin knows that unifying the Ossetian populations won't make them happy Russian citizens; just as much as the Southerners weren't happy to be Georgian. It would lead to an independence movement. [Seen Tuesday evening, I am not sure I think this is so clear-cut. Russia's stand for South Ossetians means, in the short term they would welcome Federation membership. But I still think my analysis holds true for the long term. In any case, a Georgia 'fractured', with territorial claims is, ipso facto permenantly disqualified from NATO membership]

"Russian took years to turn the tide in Chechnya and has no intention of creating a new headache with a 'Greater Ossetia' (not least because, next door, in Russian Ingushetia, there is chronic low-level successionist violence).

"The outcome will be like an Occupied West Bank of Jordan. South Ossetia will be out of Tbbilisi's control but with Russian never attempting to integrate it into Russia.

"The bigger prize, for Moscow (apart from sticking it to the West) will be the inevitable fall of Saakashvili; who made re-integration of South Ossetia into Georgia a key platform of his re-election campaign."

On Monday morning, to a UK political mate I replied (him asking what the pro-Russian 'line-to-take might be):

Georgia fired the first shots by an ill-judged unilateral action to ‘grab back’ South Ossetia and, in the process, killed Russian peacekeepers there (big mistake)
Russia responded to defend the ethnic Ossetian, civilian population and to rout Georgian aggression and seek a return to the status quo ante
Russia’s continued actions today – now that Georgia has been defeated and lost what footholds it had in South Ossetia – are aimed primarily at degrading Georgia’s ability to re-group and once again attack ethnic Ossetian citizens (and are, therefore, not inconsistent with its peacekeeping mandate)

Which I think is how the Kremlin has more or less spun it.

Saakashvili has been a vainglorious fool of iconic proportions. He's done. The Russians don't need to despose him. The Georgians will do it for them.

What I have noticed in the last few days is the rampent one-sided, anti-Russian reporting of this conflict, most notably in the UK and US media (although today I see more balance coming in).

But was has been really depressing is the virulant anti-western sentiment now becomming firmly lodged in modern, bi-lingual, hip Russia. That, I think, is more worrying. If you have Facebook, check out this group which caught my eye because one of my staffers has joined it. If you don't, here are some choice quotes:

We hereby express our allegiance with the Georgian, Osetian and Ukrainian people - who have been forced into an unlikely alliance with the West via puppet governments aimed at destabilizing Russia's sphere of influence. Some of these governments, such as that of Georgia demonstrate blatant disregard for their national purpose and sense of belonging and choose to speak English to the World Body instead of native Georgian. Which beautifully demonstrates where their intentions and directions come from.

We hereby confirm our status as Citizens of the Russian Federation and acknowledge our power.We understand our worth to you as a market, and our worth to our country as its Citizens...We are Russians. We are the first generation to grow up without prejudices...

...Or we can be the first to show the world that Western pop culture is a front for indoctrination of the masses and that other cultures to exist, that the dollar is not the global currency - oil is, and that saying NO to the Anglo Saxon world is very possible.

...For if the worst comes to worse, in the battle for hearts and minds, we will win where you have always lost... Ourmasses mobilize themselves till the last drop of blood. Yours, have to be convinced, and will stop at the first.

...makes you want to weep doesn't it?

Catching up with Red Exile

2008-05-24T14:06:00.008+04:00

[the layout of this post goes oddly here and there: I have laboured unsuccessfuly to correct it; sorry]

The most irritating news is that - somewhat predictably I suppose - the property developer doing our new Moscow office has predicted delays; to 10th June (90%) or 14th (100% certain to be ready he says). But our existing lease expires 31st May. So we had a meeting Friday evening. Fortunately we have a contingency plan in place for a temporary home: all at the developer's expense I hasten to add.

Oh, and our Russian bank - a new one which is not impressing me (so watch it Raiffeisen or I will switch our accounts from you!) has been a real pain in the ass. It is an issue of the 'hard currency passport' (yes, everything foreign needs something like a visa here) concerning a large transfer. Now lawyers and finance people in three, no, actually four, countries are beavering to sort it out.

In Russia your corporate bank is not your Friend or business partner: they are the devil! Actually, Raiffeisen Bank in Russia for a while - when I first moved here - set the benchmark of excellence, but I think their service and approach has really declined since they gobbled up Impex Bank. In Russia, it might be branded Austrian, but the middle management and service culture seems to me to have become distinctly Soviet. We were looking to pool our accounts in all the 19 countries of our region with them - I am pushing to ditch them in mine. Right now, I loathe them.

These two events - property and cunty bank - all occured after 5pm on Friday. Exhausted - a hugely busy week and two overnight train journeys in three days (and, like, 11 hours sleep in 72 hours) mean't I got home about 8pm, sank a large Bombay Saphire & Schweppes and went straight to bed - a glorious 11 hours asleep...

So, to catch up with all my news, here's some more annotated updates from my facebook account:

Today

Red Exile says it's nice to wake up in his own bed, which is rare enough these days, especially then to realise it's Saturday.
7:54am meaning only that this week I've woken up on trains and in the 'apartment suite' in our Kyiv facility and, in recent weeks, have travelled a lot. Nothing, alas, more mischievous...

Yesterday

Red Exile is back in the irresistible, terrible, magnificent, pulsing dark heart that is Moscow: where the weather is ghastly.
9:00am

May 22

Exile had a great evening in Kyiv; which really has everything in a city one could wish for. The weather is also lovely.
12:00pm I took the overnight train back again. Luckily it was the flag-ship train, so the 1st class sleeper compartments were top-notch...

Red Exile is actually watching 'the' game & really enjoying it; in the way an ingenue 1st watches a Verdi opera; wide-eyed, without partiality and for the sort of poetry of it. But I thought Mr Ronaldo splendid.
12:30am

May 21

Exile wonders why, if the football match in Moscow doesn't start until 22.45 local time, all the expats going to it are leaving their offices now. It's only Luzhniki!
3:55pm

Red Exile does not feel fresh as a daisy; couldn't sleep as his train rattled and lurched across Russia & into Ukraine.
8:20am

May 20

Red Exile is on way to Kyiv tonight - overnight train (fast one with buffet). Means a dawn appointment with Russian border guards followed by Ukrainian ones.
11:01pm

Red Exile Red Exile enjoys hot humid nights; but they're better naked in the pool; as in my Guadeloupe days. A lifetime ago I lived that.
9:21pm It was my pool, my privilege to swim naked in it at midnight...

Red Exile says Russia's stonking victory over Canada in the hockey Worlds means, if Chelski win Wednesday, that's 3 great sporting triumphs for Russian sentiment in a row.
12:31am Opinions differ amongst my Moscow staffers as to whether they are pro- or anti- Abramovich and hence whether to be pro- or anti-Chelski in fact

May 18

Red Exile sees that 'tree-sperm' season is upon us again in Moscow and the streets full of the snow-storm of germinating stuff. What's is called? Puchre?
1:18pm

May 17

Red Exile said: "and...in an instant...his weekend evaporated...".
7:10pm I had to work the weekend - a crisis management assignment came up.

Red Exile has just realised he has no opera or ballet tickets booked for anything. A sort of panic has overcome him...
2:58pm Situation now rectified! Tonight I am going (for only the second time) to see the Bolshoi dance ' The Golden Age -music by Shostakovitch and choreographed by Yuri Grigorovich

Red Exile is surprised to discover that his Asus has been buggered and so he has no mobile connectivity. Hopefully it is just the usual shoddy Russian SIM card problem.
12:25am It was a SIM card problem - Russian mobile operators seems prone to them

May 14

Red Exile is still in idyllic rural Hungary and this morning will opine on web 2.0: "content may have been king but now aggregation is God".
10:05am

May 13

Red Exile is in a particularly rural part of Hungary, just an hour's drive out of Budapest. Horses are nesting, or whatever they do, outside my window.
12:30pm

May 12

Red Exile has always been fond of Budapest. In 2003 it was on his 'list' with Beirut, Rome & Istanbul. But now 4 years in Moscow; LOL.
11:07pm

Red Exile is landed in Budapest, where everyone is enjoying a public holiday and, by now, very *relaxed*.
6:49pm No Valium? Red wine will suffice. Nasty 'crabbing' or cross-wind landing though.

Red Exile is depressed and anxious. He is about to fly to Budapest and has forgotten his in-flight Valium. Either reader will recall my absurd, but nonetheless serious, fear of flying. On trips longer than two hours I pop two Valium. Actually, I can see why people get addicted to Valium - fabulous stuff - but don't mix it with alcohol (apparently that's not good - but on flights to Kazakhstan? yeah right...)
2:22pm

May 11
Red Exile has his apartment to himself tonight for the first time in weeks, but only has one night to enjoy it.
3:15pm

May 9 - the Victory Day holiday, commemorating WWII

Red Exile Well the parade was later than it should be, and in the opposite direction from that expected, but the tanks and missiles were great big boys' toys. A tank driving up Tverskaya; and part (I was too close to get the whole thing in view!) of a Topol M ICBM, or RT-2UTTH, nuclear missile launcher (NATO IDENT: SS-27). LOL - to think that in Soviet times my photographing it would have been a serious crime.
12:39pm

That night I also took my mother to see the Bolshoi's superb production of Nabucco (4th viewing). Here an excerpt someone has ripped and put on YouTube (Elena Zelenskaya was singing the part of Abigaile that night too - it is great fun for a soprano - a baddy part for them for once to sing! But I think her Tosca is better and Irina Rubtsova the better Abigaile):

(PS: I see that this recording is from the old Bolshoi production though, not the current one! - which is visually much more stunning)

May 8

Red Exile thinks it funny that all the male expats are really excited that Russia's new long-range nukes are being paraded through the streets tomorrow. Smaller WWII ceremonies were also taking place around the city. This one was close by our office:

10:52am

May 7

Red Exile is pleased, thoroughly, to recommend Moscow fishmonger at La Marée (top of Petrovka) & thanks his mate Brian for the tip. Langoustine vivant (but not for long)!
6:55pm

Mother was making her annual visitation to Moscow. She cooked the live langoustine and wasn't the least bit screamish at dunking them in boiling water. We ate them with a mozzarella / pesto/tomato salad; quails' eggs and a Gavi-di-Gavi

Red Exile wonders how long it will take to remember to call Putin Prime Minister and not President; and congratulates Dmitri Medvedev, and Russia, on his special day. 10:05am It was inauguration day - no, I wasn't invited to the ceremony. Outrageous! LOL

Red Exile The RUS govt has just announced *visa-free* travel for Brit football fans for this bloody match: what!?!?! Madness. Are they importing fodder 4 Nashi to bully?12:24pm

We all expected there to be huge trouble with all the Brit football fans coming to Moscow - turns out it all went swimmingly. I was less concerned about Brit rioters, though, than they would be targeted by extreme Russian nationalists. But the Russian security forces had weeded them out most effectively and they were getting no-where near the supporters.

Red Exile wonders why my Lenovo x60 refuses to obey me today. Sighs: I want to go mac.. 11:33am

May 5

Red Exile say street closures for Friday's war parade rehearsal, and later metro closures, will make Moscow impossible this week. 10:11am

May 4

Red Exile exhales: "sublimi il diva; notte di passione e di gioia". Anna Netrebko concert; Moscow. Magnificent! 10:27pm

erm..yes, I can get a little over-excited in post-concert high. It was at the Moscow Grand Conservatoire, which is an amazing venue and only ten minutes walk from where I live. And that day I had dined before at Cantinetta Antinori, on their lovely garden terrace.

Red Exile has enjoyed the longest long lunch; and is going to diva Netrebko's concert. 4:43pm Anna Netrebko is my all-star-world favourite soprano right now. I have all her recordings (thanks to iTunes:

She was four month's pregnant for tonight's concert and was an absolute trooper and stunning to boot. She shared the stage with superb Romanian mezzo-sporano, Rixandra Donose and (s0-so) American tenor, Brad Cooper. Anna and Rixandra dueting in "Si, fuggire!...Ah crudel", from Bellini's Romeo & Juliet (oh yes, it is an opera too, not just a ballet) was excellent. Bellini is hugely tough to sing and sopranos use his music to showcase their voice.

Red Exile today is a 'working day' in Russia. I booked leave. Have now finished essential work and am going to have a la-la long lunch

In contrast to the UK, which pivots all public holidays to a Monday, in Russia the holidays fall where they are on the calendar, which means any day of the week. But, sensibly, the Government bunches them together. The French do this: they call it 'faire le pont" (to make the bridge) - but the French do it by adding in a day. At least they did on Guadeloupe when I lived there. In Russia, in a grasp at efficiency, they deduct a day from a nearby weekend. So: holiday is on a Thursday? Make Friday a holiday too, but work the following Sunday. It is not something I can ever get used to so I book a day's leave; but usually end up spend half of it handling essential emails and calls anyway, so wonder why I don't just give up and work it like everyone else...

Red Exile isn't dead - he's just been distracted...

2008-05-03T17:51:00.001+04:00

So 'real life' has intervened in the last few weeks in the shape of punishing work schedule; quite a lot of travel; a friend (and her 46kg dog) temporarily moving in and - which has been very stressy - the search for new offices in Moscow.

of course there comes a point, blog-wise, where after a longish absence it almost becomes intimidating to do the 'here's what I've been doing' catch-up post. I have got over this, however, by just dumping highlights from my facebook account. So here we go (with more shockingly bad photography from my handheld PDA), the recent past:

Yesterday

Red Exile is spending another public holiday in the office; surprised how humid it is outside, which is early in the season.
1:43pm
May 1
I was in Prague on business
Red Exile says: "If I should die think only this of me"... I like Shiraz with my chocolate course.
12:25am
April 30

Red Exile is watching the night twinkle on the Danube; a glass of bubbles to hand; a violin being played in the background.
10:40pm

Red Exile says "OK, so there is some football match coming up in Moscow? No, I don't have tickets and I gather the street price is edging towards Euros 1,000" - crazy! Since 'Chelski' has now won a place in this match, I am told the price is now Euros 4,500 for non-VIP tickets.
3:34pm

Red Exile does not have a PhD in applied sciences and therefore is struggling to work the shower in his hotel bedroom. Which was the Four Seasons - which is superb - and it's restaurant, Allegro, quite unbelievably good (and the holder of Prague's first and only Michelin star)
9:09am
Red Exile I have a table with a view; a pigeon breast; a 1/2 bottle of Côte Rotie: I love life, Prague & everything…
10:53pm

Red Exile is now over a bumpy flight - and normal, smiley service is resumed. We thank you for your patience in this temporary service difficulty.
9:39pm

Red Exile I have *never* thought of the Czechs as other than opportunists and wasters and, 30 minutes in, 4 yrs l8r, I see I was right! I am inclined to be in a very bad mood after landing - partly angry at myself for having been so scared 'up there', which is silly, and partly (justifiably) because Czech immigration, clearing flights in from China and Russia, didn't open the EU Citizens line; until people like me pointed out how crazy it was that we'd have to queue with all the non-EU citizens being admitted with visas. Also, the taxi system sucks.
8:18pm

Red Exile says the plane is what? Late?!? Arrgh!
5:24pm

Red Exile Has now had Aeroflot baked goods and a drink so calmer, checked in and now only to ponder age of plane about to fly...
4:30pm

Red Exile says my life is *so stressful* it is no wonder I have high blood pressure and the heart of an 80 yr old. *Made plane just on time*.
4:16pm

Red Exile hopes everyone enjoys Thursday's neo-cold war parade - cos rehearsals for it have screwed Moscow traffic even more than usual & I am l8 4 plane. The parade is 9th May actually. That didn't make the traffic less sucky.
3:02pm

Red Exile notes that one of his two female house guests is on heat. The 46kg, 4-legged one. Words cannot express... They're moving on Monday. When my mother arrives... I don't get my apartment to myself for another two weeks...
10:19am
April 28

Red Exile is off to a business lunch in brilliant sunshine.
12:00pm

Red Exile added a new photo to New offices - bought 'off-plan': what can go wrong? OK, so the building is still a 'work in progress' in a completely gutted, exterior cladding yet to be junked and re-done and completely needs rewiring and plumbing kind-of-way. But the developer *promises* me it will be ready for entry June 1st. This is good: our current lease expires 31st May.
11:46am

Red Exile Madama Butterfly / Stanislavski etc: tonight Irina Arkad'eva was *a goddess*. Act 2 finale a weepy *triumph*!
10:15pm

Red Exile is @ v. gd performance of Madama Butterfly, fuelling up before original 2hr version of Act2.
8:08pm

Red Exile is at the opera, Madama Butterfly, eyeing chandeliers warily... see April 18th for the last comment to make sense.
6:37pm

Red Exile has discovered of himself that the pathology of his fear of flying is fear of heights. He discovered this in the glass lift of Moscow's uber-elitny Lotte Plaza.
5:30pm

Red Exile Apropos his new office space, a mantra: elitny. Designerny. Loftny. *Not Pafosny*. Pafosny? Think Paris Hilton, Donatella Versace, Las Vegas and anything by Dolce & Gabbana. yes, that's right 'gay' (in the sense US highschoolers use the term) and achingly vulgar.
2:24pm

Red Exile has signed an office lease!! Designer space; central & official. Yay!

7:30pm

Red Exile is so-near-and-yet-so-far. Do we have a lease deal or not?!?!
3:42pm

Red Exile was feeling wildly exuberant; but is now back under control to face the day's trials.
9:34am
April 24

Red Exile is an idiot! Left ballet ticket @home! So sulking shopped at Tsum & now @Cafe Bar-boy... which is what one of the girls I know Christened café des artistes - the name just stuck somehow

7:46pm

Red Exile is off to the ballet tonight. German State Rhine company. Stravinsky. Rites of Spring. A dose of sanity and love in my fraught life.
5:18pm

Red Exile "To the FSB senior officer whose convoy cut me up today but then whose car was pranged by his own follow vehicle not breaking fast enough: hah! Tosser LOL". This was really too funny to watch. Made my morning actually...
10:34am
April 23

Red Exile actually dares hope there *might* be a glimmer of hope. On the property side of things...
11:11pm

Red Exile has had, in truth, a $*#@ing shite day; and sometimes feels all the burden is on him as (some) just swish about... no doubt his default inner cheeriness will be back o/night. I was stressed, just leaving the office, over-worked and miserable. It happens...
9:29pm

Red Exile just came up with a strategy "find a 30-something woman, make her pretty and let's get her to cry on television" and is concerned that he doesn't feel cheap. It was a good strategy. And I am not cheap... 400 Euros an hour baby!
12:04pm
April 22

I was in Warsaw -I am not hugely fond of Warsaw...
Red Exile has too much work to do and no time to do it.
11:22pm

Red Exile has turned down the chance to eat escalope of crocodile. No kidding - it's available at the Intercontinental Hotel Tower's Mexican restaurant (don't ask!). The public space is crappy in this hotel, but the rooms are great and the view always good (well as good as a view over Warsaw can ever be).
2:58pm

Red Exile says: "well *hello!* Aeroflot you sexy thang!". They're flying brand-new A320-200s into CEE. Eat me, BA!
9:41pm

Red Exile knows he has lived in Russia too long: he finds the baked goods in the Aeroflot business lounge quite irresistibly alluring.
5:31pm

Red Exile setting of for the traditional traffic jam to Sheremetyevo airport, to fly Aeroflot to Warsaw. Ah the glamour of it all...
2:54pm

Red Exile has narrowly missed *death* at the ballet. An 8-cm diameter crystal fell from the great central chandelier and missed my head by inches before smashing on ground in 100s pieces. Felt cold draft of death did we. This really happened and the lump of crystal missed my head by less than 30 cms
8:06pm

Red Exile is off to the Stanislaski-Nemirovich-Danchenko tonight 2 them dance Romeo & Juliet.
5:26pm
April 18

Red Exile wonders if the 'rock song' whose chorus is "are you off your meds?: is Placebo. He laughs & luvs it. It is and I downloaded it from iTunes.
11:40pm

Red Exile is off to dinner with a mate from 'the small island'...as I now refer to the Britain
7:03pm

Red Exile has just used his best BBC voice to voice-over a TNK-BP corporate video. This is the second time I have done this (just to help them out for a favour - because it is crazy expensive for them to have it done in London and any old Brit RP voice will do - and because, in more weighty and feesome matters, they are also a client)
10:43am
April 15

I was travelling in Ukraine
Red Exile sees this new overnight train comes with anti-terrorism advice. In the event security forces are going to storm your Chechen terrorists "run-like-f*ck in other direction" seems to be the ambivalent advice. On the new trains there is a poster by the loos with safety advice. This include in cute little pictures what to do if security forces are storming your high-jacked train. And, yes, run in the opposite direction is the helpful guidance they proffer...
6:38am

Red Exile is witnessing drama @ border; 2 men arrested & dragged off train by Ukrainian troops. Unpaid parking tickets? Very exciting and the full-on paramilitary performance...
12:44am
April 14

Red Exile and his friend, Johnny Walker, are at the Russian border - for processing. LOL
11:50pm

Red Exile has had his day ruined - 'new' landlord informs him he has been gazumped on new space. So back to Square one and now 5 weeks to Moscow office is homeless... This was a low moment
7:32pm

Red Exile is having a very good day commercially and meteorologically: it is a gorgeous sunny day in Kyiv; the sky is almost ridiculously blue.
2:13pm

Red Exile now has a very deep and abiding love of Ukraine; its tragic and compelling history - the more you get to know it the less like Russia it is.

You learn a lot about Ukraine in the long drive between Kyiv and Lviv and back - abandoned villages and the wrecks of old collective farms testifying to the waste of Collectivised farming, it's failure and - actually - the enormous post-Soviet decline in Ukrainian agricultural output. Land reform is desperately needed to modernise and rejuvenate Ukrainian agriculture.

At the same time, as you drive past vast, pompous - but now sadly forlorn - Soviet-era memorials to WWII (more to bludgeon home a message of loyalty to the Ukrainians than a message of celebration) you realise how awful it must have been to be Ukrainian and part of the USSR. Wondering around Lviv today it is almost impossible to imagine that this bright, smiley, European city was once Soviet. It is totally unlike anything in Russia.
1:02am
April 13

Red Exile is about to have a hearty lunch of Turkey liver; veal, sour cream & dumplings & all trimmings. It is not cuisine minceur, but do eat at café Amadeus.
1:45pm
April 12

Red Exile is enjoying his birthday in Lviv, in which the whole history of Middle Europe can be seen. The ebb and flow of empires; the heterogeneous sweep of its European architecture; but still defiantly European (Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classical, Art Nouveau...)
8:28pm
April 11

Red Exile is enjoying cafe society in Lviv; which is charming. Drinking champagne, sitting outside at the Vienna Café where people-watching is great fun
11:30pm

Red Exile is leaving lunchtime for the 5hr roadtrip to Lviv. The guy driving asks "do you want 'fast' or 'safe'?" - what the heck: fast! LOL.
12:30pm
April 10

Red Exile is having a fascinating day in Kyiv.
6:10pm

Red Exile s at the UKR border post, on the train, watching a beautiful sunrise. He is now though hungry & *very* thirsty!
6:29am
April 9

Red Exile Has just realized that as he is on tne slow-overnight 'express' - 13hrs - inexplicably it has neither restaurant nor bar. Nightmare!! This is the second time I have done this! memo-to-self: only Train #1 (Moscow-Kyiv) and Train #2 (Kyiv Moscow) have buffet cars. The others *don't*
9:54pm

Red Exile en route to Kyiv & then Lviv.
8:40pm

Red Exile is somewhere between despair (back to office property square 1) and elation (deal done). Only in Moscow do we live by these 2 emotional gears and no others. That last sentence, BTW, is probably the truest thing I have ever written about life in Moscow.
12:20pm
April 8

Red Exile did have to smile as he was cut up this morning by a rickety old Lada with *diplomatic plates*.
10:04am
April 7

Red Exile has had just the most sublime & wonderful night at the ballet; even if his body won't fly dream a soul can. Sometimes good performances make my purple-prose-restraint short-circuit.
10:26pm

Red Exile wonders what you say to a week that is pretty-much ruined before it has begun... hello? Property-related - a great development I was hoping to take was snaffled up - even though I had agreed terms with the developer - by a Russian bank.
10:15am
April 6

Red Exile woke up this morning dreaming about the future of capitalism. Last night he tried to dream about Tuscany. Oh well...
5:30pm
April 4

Red Exile is back to the drawing board: 8 weeks and counting to find new offices - or else it is hot desking in my front room! Another potential site fell-through (because this one was pretty far from a metro station and, in any case, I just learned that this particular station is about to close for a year's remont; which ruled the property out completely.
5:45pm
April 3

So there you have it. Normal service will now hopefully be resumed...

Why, for Russia, Turkey is an issue

2008-04-04T01:07:00.001+04:00

Discussion over dinner, in Moscow, "we were looking to like Turkey" but... based on this news...

Of course, I am no Turkey expert, but would consider that – in an environment of global credit restriction, ‘religious risk’ is just a punt too far (apropos the recent State Prosecutor’s play) and while these games might seem logical - politically, locally - they have played massively badly, globally. As bad as Russia’s politics can do, of course, but the world is robust to Russia risk these days: and Turkey isn’t 15% of the world’s proven hydrocarbon reserves.

On any meaningful econometric and trade analysis of Turkey we should be saying ‘wow, what opportunistic treasure here lies’. But, in a world where once-mighty Bear Sterns got sold for a song, Wall Street, with its deeply-embedded fear of Islamic-exposed markets, may find global chief investment and credit risk officers will be giving Turkey an investment pass…that hits Turkish inter-bank markets fast and hard.

…logically, IMHO, Turkey should be a neo-BRIC market. Actually, however, I think investment in Turkey in the next 12 months will be tough to obtain, except out of the middle east and, hmm, Russia…. But in the next 8 weeks (for technical reasons) you will read about ‘credit crunch hits Russia’… So don’t bank on that Russian ‘deep pocket’ of last resort, which global banking markets would like to get hooked on, for Turkish banks….

…when global capitalism tries to figure out ‘economic misery’ it tries to refer back, like a prophet to the Old Testament – which is why macro-economists try to make comparisons again to the 1973 oil crisis (high fuel prices + bubble (property-related) indebtedness +‘culture clash + war in the middle east)’. Except this is unknown territory. The primary markers of geo-political-economics are unique, today. For the first time, actually, in my adult life.

Post-modern capitalism has never known High oil price + banks scared to lend to each other, let alone *you* + consumers *drowned* in debt + massive geopolitical (war-related) risk + ‘now is when the cost-base differential of globalization hits us domestically in the west’ + a crisis in western democratic consensus (I mean, if there was consensus, the DEMS, in the US primaries would have a candidate by now)…nor is there the ‘left-right’ western political debacle which, strangely, we see now, as if for the first time, benignly, underpinned 1970s economic risk analysis.

No, there is no handbook for this one.

Sadly, since 1918, it has been Turkey’s fate to be on the shit-end of this, and every, geo-political and economic stick.

On a purely numbers basis? TUR real economic growth is likely this year to be half that of Ukraine’s – inflation however will also likely be half Ukraine’s. Not so bad huh? Way bad! Ukraine isn’t what a Global Risk Officer, in New York or Frankfurt or Zurich, would call ‘at Islamicist risk’, nor are they scared of its long-term macro-social story. That changes the investment dynamics 180 degrees. These (men) are scared of Turkey. Like they were of Russia.1998-2002? 2004?

To be a Global Chief Investment Officer, right now, looking at Turkish stock, would be really interesting. 'Cos I am fascinated, precisely because I don't know if - should I have that job - I would decide buy Turkish or 'avoid exposure to Turkey like the plague'...

I guess, for the good ones, that is how intelligent CIOs earn their money...

Red Exile really wants to buy this house (off topic)

2008-04-02T01:41:00.002+04:00

...but it is, really, on the market 'too soon' (for which reasons Exile won't dwell and be vulgar)...

...but blast 'global credit crunch' I could really do an elderly relative to drop off their perch (and, yes, I do hate myself for even thinking that)

The current arrangement sucks (rip out current kitchen and bathrooms = EUR 50k minimum) & burn the furniture in the pictures - but, hello? - 100 sqm drawing room in *the* medieval city I have decided to buy in?

I may have to wait years for another elderly Lucchese to die to free up real estate like this...

I am, bluntly, just not one of life's lucky people...

Official confirmation of the end of an era: Aeroflot and the Tupolev 134

2008-03-31T21:58:00.000+04:00

This brokers note extract across the screens today:

Aeroflot sells Tupolev 134s
Rencap
March 31, 2008

Event: On Friday (28 Mar) Aeroflot announced the sale of its Tupolev 134 regional jets. Tu-134 has been furrowing the skies for more than 40 years but on 31 Dec 2007 the company stopped operating this type of aircraft. Nine of these planes were sold to Aeroflot subsidiaries: Aeroflot-Don, Aeroflot-Nord and Aeroflot-Plus; the company plans to sell the remaining five to external buyers. The average age of these aircrafts is 28 years old and they are priced at approximately $3mn.

Ah well. No more bone-shattering ‘lift-offs’ from the Soviet workhorse of the skies for Aeroflot. Um…not quite…it’s two main regional subsidiaries will still be using the Tupi for some time to come.

They have to. While, ahead of State Duma elections in December, there was lots of celebration of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 RJ – the planned replacement for the Tupi and set to be the Russian competitor to the Embraer and even the Boeing 737; the reality is that it is not even ready for test-flight yet.

But the Tupi had its charm: as I recorded in the back end of this post. The real writing on the wall came, though, when the EU closed its airspace to Tupolev 134s last year.

I wonder why? (PS: everyone survived this ‘incident’):

Week in review: St Petersburg; Russia Today and Roman Abramovich

2008-03-31T01:02:00.002+04:00

On Monday night I took, for the first time, the newish Grand Express train to St Petersburg. A first-class-only service, it underlines that, for the best in business class train travel, Russia is streets ahead of the rest of the world. It offers suites (with their own shower and bathroom) and even the more modest premium cabins (which I took) have their own washbasins, 50% larger than normal and very comfortable beds and satellite TV: and superb waiter-to-cabin service.

For St Pete’s I had packed the full furs, guessing the weather could be inclement. And, boy, was it? Perhaps the worse weather I have experienced in four years of living in Russia swiftly descended on Tuesday afternoon. Visiting a client located in Arsenalnaya I thought it might be a pleasant hour or so’s walk back to Winter Palace Square (close to where my hotel was located). So I am strolling along the Neva when suddenly this extraordinary wind sweeps down from the Gulf of Finland and – despite the knee-length black leather, fur-lined coat (with the luxuriant mink collar and matching mink hat) it feels like the talons of an Arabian falcon are slicing through my bones.

So I turn right and, fortuitously, am right by Finlyansky Station (the setting for so many Cold War tales, both fictional and very real). I negotiate a sensible taxi fare to Winter Palace Square and, as I arrive, so do the depths of mid-winter. The snow starts to fall horizontally…

Having missed lunch – and knowing I had an evening at the opera – I took High Tea and watched the snow fall and fall: about 12cms in just 4 hours. And, indeed, as I left the opera later that night, the weather was staggeringly bad.

My guest for business lunch the next day – in response to “please suggest somewhere where they can cook” – took me to the newish Terrassa restaurant. It was quite superb and almost as good as the best elitny restaurants in Moscow. Lunch was, of course, ‘dry’, but had it not been, I think it would have been almost as expensive as Moscow too. I had taken half day’s leave and spent it in annual pilgrimage to the Hermitage. Having Russian residency meant I was allowed to buy a ticket for just 100 RUR, which was very pleasing.

Lots of the rooms are closed for restorations until spring (Mid-April), but I really go for the Renaissance and Baroque Italian collection; including some excellent Titians and a favourite Bronzino. The Palace does have, BTW, a superb collection of Van Dycks; including several bought after the English Royal Collection was broken up after our civil war, which ended up in the Romanov collections.

Blogging was mostly absent this week, as it was rather busier even than usual. Saturday morning a car from the station comes to take me to Russia Today, where they wanted me to do a studio interview on British investment in Russia. The entrance to Russia Today is located in the vast RIA Novosti complex (just by the dustbins actually, which I think is surely a political sideswipe at the state media TV outlet employing so many foreigners).

Actually, I was crap. No, really, I was. I have done, in various countries, over a hundred bits of telly and radio and this was my worst ever. I have since seen the tape and, while not a train wreck, as such, it is just too ragged a performance; my ‘punch points’ were off and in one sentence I seem to lose the ability to conjugate in my first language. It is not what Exile promises broadcasters: to give great headline. On the other hand, I keep my answers within a nicely sound-bitey 15 seconds each or so. But, most unforgiveably of all, I am dull.

Being driven home, I pondered having Driver drop me off for lunch in Kamergersky. Thank God I didn’t!! Before my interview I went into make-up and, as they do things with my hair (a gallon of lacquer) and stick on some slap, I am distracted by the producer’s briefing. And although you can’t see this on the tape – no I am not giving you the link! – when I later walk in my apartment, having been driven back, I catch myself in the mirror. I am ORANGE. Orange I tell you, with the hair swept en bouffant like a Soviet '80s crooner. I look like a paedophile from Paphos. If I had walked into Café Des Artistes like that I would never have heard the end of it!

Having scrubbed my face, I switched on a new opera CD I have (Anna Netrebko arias); pour a glass of Montrachet; kick off the Guccis and try, just try, to clear myself of a most unsettling feeling of ineptitude and ennui.

Back at the office on Monday, I shall, Stalin-like, issue a приказ to staff and have this TV appearance declared un-history; never to be referred to again…

Saturday evening, I took a dearly beloved friend to Nedal’nij Vostok; where the selection of crustacea on offer is prepared in some of the finest ways available in the world. While there, the vast room is suddenly overcome by a nearly static charge of excitement. A moment later and I see Roman Abramovich walk past my table. Two noteworthy things.

The first is he really does have the most startlingly clear blue eyes, lit like lamps; and I can see why women, caught in their ice-blue gaze, are entranced by him. Secondly, he was body-guard free. If you hang out in Moscow’s elitny restaurants, you will see plenty of household name billionaires, but I like the fact that Abramovich doesn’t ponce about with heavy personal security, inside. Outside, as I was later to discover, it is rather different. Abramovich doesn’t go for flash cars, but the huge Chrysler limo, flanked by four 4x4s was clearly his. The nest of antennae on them, each bulging with OMON, clearly gave it away. He is entitled to OMON protection, of course, as regional Governor of Chukotka.

Tonight, I expected to see Nabucco at the Bolshoi, but discovered at home I should have been there Saturday night. Not a great end to an otherwise diverting week.

Red Exile’s week in Culture: operas at the Mariinsky and the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko

2008-03-30T22:01:00.003+04:00

Tuesday 25th March: In St Petersburg this week, I went to see Turandot at the Mariinsky. Turandot is not the most revered of Puccini’s opera’s – perhaps in recent years because people are disappointed that Nessum Dorma – made so famous by Luciano Pavarotti – is indeed only three minutes long; and the ending of the opera is slightly odd.

Puccini died, of course, before the last two scenes were written and these were completed by Franco Alfano. At the opera’s première in 1926, in front of il Duce, the iconic conductor, Toscanini, stopped the orchestra at the point where Pucini’s autograph work ended, turned to the audience and said: “Here the opera finishes, because at this point the Maestro died.” And, it is true, the final plot resolution (where ice-princess Turandot’s heart melts and is united in love for Prince Calaf) is wildly improbable and unconvincing, even for opera.

The late, great Paverotti in his signature piece:

In truth, this was a so-so outing at the Mariinsky; although I must confess I have never yet seen a production of Turandot to rival Andrei Serban’s classic production, in repertoire at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which I first saw 15 years ago and kind of defines Turandot for me (and how I caught the opera bug).

But, to the Mariinsky’s Turandot. Irina Gordei, as Princess Turandot, was sublime – and indeed convincingly forbidding in the first two acts. Yuri Marusin, as the lead tenor, Prince Calaf, was not having a good night. He fluffed his breathing in Nessun Dorma (it is, to be fair, a very, very difficult piece to sing) and faltered badly about a third of the way through and, for a while, his confidence fled him. Was he coming down with a cold I wondered? I don’t know him as a singer, but it seemed to me that he struggled through this performance and lacked power in his voice. His was a disappointing performance. He is also, to be blunt, just far too old for this part: more truck driver than dashing Tatar prince…

Some of the cameo roles, though, were performed very well: especially the comic parts of Ping, Pong and Pang (Andrei Spekhov, Alexander Timchemko – who was very good indeed – and Oleg Balashov). A notable shout-out too to Victor Vikhrov as Emperor Altoum: singing from a gantry up in the gods, his voice had timorous power and sweet reason.

I was delighted to catch up with the news, BTW, that the Mariinsky closure for restoration (which was scheduled for the end of this season), has been postponed until the end of 2009. Partly this is because the temporary home being built for the Mariinsky opera and ballet companies is behind schedule but mostly, I suspect, because the Russian authorities leaned on the Mariinsky not to close this grand old theatre before the Main Stage of the Bolshoi has re-opened (November 2009).

Thursday 27th March: Tosca at the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko. This is the first time I had seen this production and I was initially a little apprehensive; because Tosca calls out for a truly onctueuse presentation, whereas the S-N-D’s, love them though I do, tend to be more sparse and stripped down to visual minimums (although often strikingly so). Actually it was a success with a set design that was both minimalist but also evocative of Rome’s lavish opulence.

Tosca is another punishing role for a soprano and I thought Irina Arkadeva was only partly successful. For me her voice has too much coloratura for Puccini and now and then I thought her tendency to warble quite distracting (but this might have been to cover up some rather loose pronunciation of the Italian libretto). I have two wonderful recordings of this opera, with the Tosca role being performed, respectively by Callas and Angela Gheorghiu (the latter, Romanian diva I have yet to see perform live but her voice is extraordinary). So it is a really hard role for a younger soprano and, judging by the sour look on her face at the curtain call, I think Arkadeva realized that she hadn’t quite pulled it off that night.

But contrast, Mikhail Vekya, as the tenor lead, Cavaradossi, was just brilliant and his was a complete triumph of a performance – now if only he has sung Calaf in St Pete’s! – his performance was also so much more enjoyable because he was clearly having the time of his life. At the curtain call he was so Italian (and I mean that in a good way), I really had to check the program again to confirm he was Russian: he has a tremendous and infectious enthusiasm for his craft.

Also giving a superb performance was Aleksey Shishlaev as the con brio baddie, Baron Scarpia. His end of Act One - Tosca, nel tuo cuor s'annida Scarpia – while the chorus accompanies in a Te Deum was just riveting and bliss to experience. Overall I thought this a highly rewarding evening and a production I would recommend to anyone coming to Moscow and wanting, tentatively, to dip their virgin toe in the waters of opera.

While in St Pete's I went to a splendid classical music CD/DVD specialist I know; hard by the wonderful Astoria Hotel, where I stay. There I treated myself to some pieces that I have heard but don't own; including another piece by Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, to whose work I am becomming addicted.

I also bought a DVD of Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha. Now almost 30 years old, this established Glass's reputation as enfant terrible of musique minimale. I have yet to carve out the right evening to listen to it. "Inspired by the life of Ghandi", it has no plot. And the libretto is in Sanskrit. It is not performed very often.

Red Exile at home: a photo-meme

2008-03-17T23:55:00.003+03:00

From this last Sunday

(and, apologies in advance, I am a truly crappy photographer)

So I return from a week in London and before me are rows of sheeny-shiney shoes. Housekeeper had sent them to the boy at the Marriott Aurora for cleaning. I love clean shoes - scuffed shoes depress me: having them sent out for cleaning is an essential indulgence (especially as snow is forecast for Moscow later this week). The Arab photographs are part of a group I have had framed for the hallway:

While in London I splurged at Jo Malone's, inter alia, on scented candles. I brought back a bunch of 'wild fig and cassis'. The cushions, from a shop I like in Marrakesh, hide the hideous sofa (like all expats, this is a rented apartment)... into every life a little rain must fall...

The Jo Malone splurging included more bottles of Pomegrante Noir. There is no Jo Malone stockist in Russia - it is still a hard life out here LOL - so I buy whenever I am in London or fly British Airways... but the latter no longer stocks Pomegranate Noir, so I bought extra in her shop: sulk. Although I have... er... a fair stock, I always buy, because one never knows how long it will be between trips.

Housekeeper and I have a game. She constantly rearranges the bottles in different shapes, whereas I like to group them by scent (er... I 'collect' three). She goes for fancy shapes. It is our little game and, since I am never here when she is, is as close as we have gotten to human interaction since the day I hired her...

I also checked that the office courier had picked up my opera and ballet tickets for next few weeks. These are:

Tosca - 27th March

Nabucco - 29th March

Chaika (sixth time!) - 7th April

Romeo & Juliet (Dusseldorf ballet on tour) - 19th April - and I have just ordered tickets for their Stravinsky/Rites of Spring for 23rd April

Madam Butterfly - 27th April

I guess I am an opera and ballet nut (but this quarter has been a little disappointing in terms of offering, so I have gone less than usual):

On Saturday I also worshipped at the Nepresso store on Petrovka Pereulok - and finally succumbed to buying one of those cute capsule holders (who on earth buys those wildly over-priced trinkets I had thought...er...me, it seems). Currently on offer, Chez Exile, we have (left to right) the current 'limited edition' Goroka; the previous limited edition 'special club' (which I 'stock-piled' before it sold out); Arpeggio (for breakfast) and the one I buy for people who insist on adding cow-juice to real coffee...

On Saturday, I also bought a lamp stand: slightly Ottoman, slightly Victorian-English. That corner needed a lamp stand. It was ruinously expensive (at 31,000 RUR), but it appealed to me:

The lighting now works better and doesn't clash with the pair of landscapes I bought from Ukrainian painter, Anna Gidora, from her 'Black Sea' series. They are dedicated the the effect of the wind upon land and souls. She wrote a poem about them:

"Тень ветра почти незаметна,

Но очаровывает своим присутствием.

Ветер всегда наполнен смыслом.

Через тень он шлёт послания,Но как научиться их читать?"

"Shadow of the wind is almost imperceptible,But it charms by its presence.

Wind is always filled with sense.

Through a shadow it sends a message,

But how could we learn to read it?"

(getting into Russia, on the overnight train, required an export license from the Ukrainian Ministry of culture (Ukrainian customs); temporary import license into Russia and (signed and stamped, natch) documents for the eventual Russian export license)

Sunday evening I settled down with this really sweet US-Ukrainian film (starring Elijah Wood) and a bottle of the Marchesi Antinori's finest not-quite-plonk (of which I bought a case from Moscow's Globus Gourmet):

Quiet weekends in the world's busiest city are a treasure...

Final Day (III) of the Ukrainian Investment Summit, London. Taking stock

2008-03-13T22:44:00.006+03:00

Wednesday was the third and final day of the Ukrainian investment summit in London: and Adam Smith Conferences did an excellent job overall. This was the most interesting conference I had attended in years.

The session I will highlight today - and the topic, really, on everyone lips for the last three days: Spotlight on the growth in Ukrainian IPOs.

Some useful statistics from Ernst & Young’s Michael Lynch-Bell and Oleksandra Dubovyk:

- About 80 Ukrainian companies will seek IPOs between 2008 and 2012, says E&Y
- About 20% of these will be financials and about 38% will come from retail and the consumer-facing sector
- Of expected IPOs, about 23% prefer the Warsaw Sock Exchange – Exile says is the right choice for smaller-larger and larger-medium-sized firms, much cleverer than AIM which Exile loathes – and about 11%+ will go to Frankfurt. Overall, though, about 66% will chose London (and 45% overall, will go to AIM). Exile would gently opine that AIM is what *the advisers* want you to choose, because they - and their cost-base, are based in London and need London-based fees, but on a IPO+5 years basis, Exile thinks vendors and CEOs will look back and wish they had chosen Warsaw; IMHO.

Actually, if there is one theme yours truly detected this week, it is the slightest disconnect between the surge of advisors into Kyiv, and the true underlying fundamental health of the new issues market.

Now, says Exile, from a cost, secondary market liquidity and practical POV, London may not be right for loads of CEE and Eurasian firms, especially when you start to compare Warsaw or Frankfurt, inter alia, to AIM.

Elsewhere yesterday, Andrey Pivovarsky gave a very interesting presentation – and overall I think Dragon Capital really impressed at this conference: very bright, very eager, professional and – actually - nice guys. Pivovarsky showed stats that the January and February new equity bookbuilding had been – as I think we all suspected – pretty ghastly. But he remains confident across the whole of 2008.

Nonetheless, while underlining that firms undergoing IPO this quarter raised much less – or the same at much lower valuations / a bigger slice of equity – than they initially planned for; certain themes are emerging to make an IPO a success. Now, I have to say, these are not rocket science and, if anything, show that some rational thinking has come to the emerging markets equity scene; but they are worth repeating even so:

- Investors will shun new issues where the free-float is too small (e.g. even below 3o%)
- High growth plays preferred over merely ‘domestic market sector stalwarts’ (PS: some of the Ukrainian financial-industrials groups will find themselves being penalized over their commodity-price vulnerable staples, says I, and should perhaps talk more about the wizzier parts of their portfolios).
- *Transparency* is everything. Dodgy history; less than stellar corporate governance structure or arrogant vendor-oligarch as CEO-God – forget it. You might have got such an IPO away even 9 months ago. In today’s still somewhat shell-shocked market; you may not.

Then Pivovarsky said something for which – football-player-stylee – I wanted to run on the pitch and hug him – the glory days of the last two years were over, he said, “and those who can, might be better to wait” a year or two, for the best equity valuations.

As he pointed out: investors want a ‘guaranteed’ (sic) 30% annual rate of return on new Ukrainian issues; given that there are now, globally, bond products out there – with arguably much less risk – offering 20% annual return.

One speech particularly caught my interest. Although densely argued, Clive Cook, from the London corporate governance team at Baker & Mackenzie, trotted through the difference between the obligations of firms listing on AIM, versus the main market.

Although AIM toughened up the rules applicable to AIM market-listed companies, and their NOMADs, it still strikes me that, if I were an institutional investor, I would always want a risk discount on an AIM-quoted company compared, for instance, to one quoted on Frankfurt.

PS: at one point, he argued that the London market(s) had the advantage because of the inclusion it gave you in the FTSE indices. Um…not so much. GDRs are not included. FTSE International was, for eons, a client of mine. It is a teeny-tiny technical point, but for firms like Ferrexpo (which, you may recall I pointed out issued Ords in London, and not GDRs), they get a liquidity boost, which *does* benefit share price, from being main market companies. Being part of, as I think Ferrexpo now is, the FTSE350, means that index tracker funds, set to that index, *have* to own the stock. As I said, it is a teeny-tiny point but, over five+ years, it *does* positively enhance share price performance.

Day 2: Blogging the Ukrainian Investment Summit, London

2008-03-12T19:22:00.003+03:00

As is typical of these sorts of multi-day conferences, there was a 50% reduction in the delegate audience on day two, from day 1. That is not necessarily a bad thing: for these sort of things day one is boosted by government officials’ hangers-on and an ephemera of media. So the day II audience is more focused and less …um… star-fucky.

Yesterday (Tuesday, Day II) was banker day and the highlight session for yours-truly was the session on Ukraine and the Capital Markets; able chaired by Brian Best, of Dragon Capital, who gamely opened by saying: “Actually, the market sell-off around the world pretty much bypassed Ukraine; one of the few occasions the market’s lack of liquidity worked in our favour”.

The ebullient Sergiy Kulpinsky, equity strategist from Alfa Capital Ukraine, pointed out that only 6% of the shares of quoted Ukrainian companies are actually ‘free-float’; which is staggeringly small and reminds us that Ukrainian share prices (says Exile) are probably at the top of the market, even now.

Ukraine's PFTS index rose 135% in 2007; so don’t go hunting bargains in the Kyiv secondary market but, as it happens, there are some new issues coming through the next 2-3 years which, if not priced too greedily, are going to be interesting in the long term. That, of course, is the attraction of a market like Ukraine: long-term strong growth. But it is currently expensive to buy into.

Kulpinskiy – who is a very good speaker, BTW, a rarity at these events – went on with a nice analogy about ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ and the Ukrainian Stock Market, the PFTS:

“the good is the market and the expertise of the brokers there" [OK…um…nice sell mate] "the bad are the fundamentals of the market…inflation, soaring household debt and the fact private consumption is overheating.” [Spot on says I. Ukraine should have a wonderful next five years but it has got to sort out its inflation problem or else the pendulum could easily switch the other way]; and the ugly? “The politics: and the political risk discount international investors want on Ukrainian new issues”.

Nick Koemtzopoulos from Credit Suisse – whose speech was a curate’s egg - but the second half was way too low-brow for the expert audience he was addressing – enlightened us that the ‘emerging markets’ (the BRIC nations and the satellite economies that orbit around them) accounted for 33% of new equity issues, globally, last year. That’s more than Western Europe. But it is a tough market out there:

New equity issues globally:

2005 on 2004 up 190%
2006 on 2005 up 216% - a handful of mega-issues, like the giant Rosneft IPO out of Russia and China’s ICBC account for a big chunk
2007 on 2006 up 66%
Q12008 on Q12007 down 97% - in terms of market sentiment, a huge amount rides on how the Visa IPO goes later this month.

However, in Ukraine, 40% - forty percent! – of stock market new issues in 2007 were in real estate and construction. That’s a huge skewing of the market to one sector. Real estate and construction, of course, are highly leveraged plays on expected future economic confidence. Without continued confidence, those stocks can sink like a stone.

That said, what has stalled other global markets is the fall-out from the global credit crunch last year. Well for Ukraine, much more than Russia, the global credit crisis has so far been something that happened ‘somewhere else’. The Ukrainian market hasn’t been so affected by a lack of confidence in the banking sector.

Here the historically, relatively undeveloped banking capital market has had the unexpected benefit of protecting local market sentiment. This is because, due to country risk, Ukrainian banks have pretty much only been able to tap the bond markets for 1-year notes (rather than the 10-year, convertible bonds etc., issued by 1st world banks).

Now, on the one hand this has meant that many Ukrainian banks have to refinance, in 2008’s tighter markets, money they only raised in 2007. On the other hand, such tight borrowing conditions placed a limit on Ukrainian banks ability to leverage up - according to Dmitri Sredin from Troika Dialog’s primary debt team, 2008 refinancing risk for Ukrainian banks is low, he says, in 2008. In fact, only 2.8% of bank capital needs refinancing this year.

Exile says: that’s way lower than Russia – and even more so compared to poor old Kazakhstan whose banking sector is a mess – and this is important. 2008 should see a smooth banking sector in Ukraine and this, of all things, should help to underpin market confidence about quality new issues in Ukraine.

Statistic of the day:

In 2003 the corporate debt market (corporate bonds issued and new syndicated loans granted), globally, was worth $2.4 trillion in new deals done.

By 2007, this had ballooned to over $7.5 trillion (factoid courtesy Nicolas Lipovsky at Calyon bank).

Having more than trebled in five years, that’s not ‘strong global growth’, that is a huge debt bubble. Last autumn’s credit crunch therefore is something of a correction we really all ought to have seen coming and expected. The fact we all didn’t tell you how crap capitalists are when greed gets in the way of judgment. I calculate that as a CAGR of almost 26%; way outstripping nominal, annual global GDP growth.

PS: $6.7 billion of that debt growth, in 2007, was for Ukraine – $3 bn of it for banks – compared to $11.7 bn in Kazakhstan; sadly, for Kazakhstan, also mostly for banks.

Real Economy Stat of the day #1:

Ukraine is already the 7th largest new car market in the whole of Europe.

The top three are Germany, Italy and, at number three, Russia. This is a good reminder that you shouldn’t view the RUK markets (new buzz phrase: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan) as emerging markets: they have pretty much already emerged. It is now all about market share.

Real Economy stat of the day #2:

Ukrainian real GDP growth in 2007 was about 7.5% - about the same as Russia’s – but inflation outstripped even Russia’s worsening record: 16.6% inflation in 2007 and is expected to be 17% +.

Exile - This, BTW, reminds us of yesterday’s macro-economic advice, from Anders Aslund, at the conference. Import inflation has to be sterilized ASAP through a re-valuation of the Ukrainian Hryvna against the US Dollar.

Blogging the Ukrainian Investment Summit, London

2008-03-11T12:23:00.001+03:00

Monday through Wednesday inclusive is the 4th Ukrainian Investment Summit, organized by Adam Smith Conferences. It is a star-studded cast and, relative to many of the conferences I schlep to, more thought-provoking. It is a very well-supported conference, although the audience is only about 10% the size of that at the Russian Economic Forum in its halcyon days (which tells you a lot about the relative sizes of the investment markets).

The first speaker, Monday, was Richard Spring, the British, opposition Conservative MP, who is President of the British Ukrainian Society. I like Dickie: he is elegant company over a tumbler of whiskey. He is a charming old cove – very bright but likes to pretend otherwise – and made much of how “across both sides of the House of Commons – don’t worry about so-called Enlargement Fatigue – we will support Ukraine’s membership of the European Union” (pause for cheer which… um… didn’t come).

Of course, it is easy to support something not remotely likely soon to happen. Dickie Spring is likely to be gaga or even pushing up the daisies before Ukraine has any meaningful chance of accession. In terms of acquis communautaire it must be even ten years behind Turkey. So, you know, don’t hold your breath…

The opening session’s government speakers – three ministers no less – was a remarkable insight into how the Soviet-style of long speeches that rattle off statistics still is the preferred modus operandi of the post-Soviet politician. They were gruesomely dull to sit through.

Across the morning, the star speakers were from Ferrexpo, which had such a superb debut on the London Stock Exchange last year. Konstantin Zhevago is the acceptable face of oligarchy: the man is also a visionary and his commitment to professional management – his imported CEO, Michael Oppenheimer, spoke later in the day – transparency and solid corporate governance has been rewarded by a 160% rise in the share price since last year’s IPO.

Some notes from my speaker program (I do this at conferences like I do at the opera and ballet – but without the opera glasses):

- Konstantin Zhevago – everything that has been beneficial that has been achieved in the Ukrainian economy has been in spite of, not because of Ukrainian governments, he said.

- Dr Anders Aslund (Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington DC – and a well-known Cold War-economic analyst, notably well-funded in the USA – winks – and sometime economic advisor to Ukraine itself): “Ukraine must break the link to the US$ in order to control inflation. The Government shouldn’t talk about it, it should just do it: and, as a first step, peg the Hryvna to a basket of currencies weighted towards the Euro”

Exile opines: he’s right and Ukraine needs to revalue its currency to sterilize import-related inflation. I think it could now find a natural level 15-20% above where it is now against the USD, IMHO. It is a tricky issue though. Although nominally – indeed constitutionally, independent, the oligarchs have the National Bank of Ukraine by the balls, and don’t want a stronger Hryvnia which will take the steam out of the export growth of their heavy industries. Equally, a ‘basket of currencies’ reflecting Hryvna reality means a chunk of Russian rubles: monetary-nerd, President Yushchenko, would hate that. So it won’t happen just yet: the politics isn’t right, unless Yush’ thinks the Hryvna can jump straight to a free-float (which will be an econometric shock he will be afraid to risk).

Ilya Arkhipov, System Capital Management – sadly (I say sadly because I have a really good mate who works for SCM, who’ll read this, and will not be amused, but…) wins the raspberry award for worst speech. Although it was interesting for us to get a walk-around the lesser-known parts of Mr Akhmetov’s mighty empire, it would have been nice if he had addressed the issue (“Showing the experience of leading…investors”). Speakers from my region always ignore the issue and force-feed you an investor presentation; quite counter-productively so.

The foreign investor experience:

I thought this was a noteworthy bit. The two biggest foreign investors in Ukraine are Telenor (asset revaluation rather than hard cash) and ArcelorMittal (hard cash). Both have had an uneven experience, although rising asset values in the case of the former; and strong profits in the case of the latter, mean they will stick it out.

The speakers were:

- Ole Bjorn Sjulstad – very senior at Telenor; staggeringly bad speaker (who desperately needs help to be able to give an effective speech).

- Narendra Chaudhary – very, very senior at ArcelorMittal (and one of Lakshmi Mittal’s most trusted lieutenants BTW). I was, BTW, quietly appalled at the bluntly racist comments – in the audience murmur around me – while he was speaking. I was even more appalled that these insults were being whispered in English, as well as Russian.

Both these companies complain about the lousy rule of law in Ukraine, huge uncertainty over ownership rights, corporate governance and, of course, bent judges. The Mittal part of ArcelorMittal bought Kryvorizhstal, the giant, 46,000-employee steel mill, at auction (it having been seized by La Orangina, after the Revolution, from Renat Akhmetov, now one of the king-makers of Ukrainian political and economic life). Since then Kryvorizhstal has been plagued by union problems and last year, says Chaudhary, suffered 457 government agency investigations and enquiries: thus showing that Mr Akhmetov’s reach is modest compared even to his grasp.

Both being subject to poorly written and corruptly administered law, these two companies are *the* textbook examples about investment in Ukraine: “you should make good money, but it is the most risky place you’ll likely ever invest in and the one whose business environment is perhaps the least trustworthy”. I am slack-jawed at the (especially European) firms which blunder in there (“Ukraine is a democracy, it is more European. It is therefore less risky than Russia”) – completely talking out of their arses.

If these two firms united in delivering their message of optimism, hedged with criticism – and delivered it just a tad more effectively – even Ukraine’s notoriously self-obsessed and naval-gazing political elite might, you know, finally wake up and do something about it…

PS: Stefan Wagstyl, Eastern Europe editor of the FT, is a nice man who writes well and insightfully: he is hopeless, however, at chairing a panel session or acting as moderator of a conference. Memo to all conference organizers: stop using him! There is a skill to chairing a conference panel session effectively: he hasn’t got it.

PPS: Because Ferrexpo is actually a UK PLC which, via a Swiss vehicle, owns its Ukrainian assets (and therefore issued Ordinary Shares on the London Stock Market not, as is usually the case for CIS firms, GDRs), it is actually just a hair’s breath away from being elevated to the FTSE100, so great has its share price run been.

Now, if that happens the Kremlin sure will sulk: Russian firms issue GDRs, not Ords, in London so cannot be part of the FTSE100 (silly rule BTW). I met with one Russian mega-firm last week which wasn’t being very subtle about the fact that the Kremlin wants them to list *anywhere* other than London, even if just to piss on the British.

An abomination at the Bolshoi

2008-03-07T14:45:00.004+03:00

“It doesn't matter how high you lift your leg.The technique is about transparency, simplicity, making an earnest attempt”.
~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Three one act ballets at the Bolshoi: 28th February performance

This is a little overdue and I may not have bothered at all if it was not that rare thing for me to post: a very bad night at the Bolshoi. Just a few days after I saw the Mariinsky’s cool, artful professionalism, I was subjected to an abomination at the Bolshoi of such artless posturing, I despaired.

Just the day before, chatting to a chum, I observed that the fact artistic director, Alexey Ratmansky, was leaving the Bolshoi at the end of this year would, of course, please all the dinosaurs and that preening Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who I can’t stand. We now know who will replace Ratmansky: yay (BTW, a good article in that link).

I fear 2010 and after will see a Bolshoi ballet bounce between artistic chaos and a deadening, frozen-in-aspic cult of Grigorovich. I mean, I love Grigorovich as a choreographer – his Romeo and Juliet is a superb use of Prokofiev’s soaring score – but I don’t want endless Grigorovich.

Ballet, you see, is like football. It is about passion and teamwork and I feel about Tsiskaridze like my Tottenham Hotspur-loving boss (I know nothing about soccer, but even I know he must be plainly masochistic) feels about… um… Freddie Ljunberg! [That was so random – he is the only soccer player who popped in my mind]

So anyway: the atrocity of the 28th:

Three one act ballets:

- Class Concert – choreography by Asaf Messerer to a mélange of music arranged (well actually) by Alexander Tseitlin

A staggeringly poor performance by the Bolshoi Orchestra. The timing was way off on several pieces and, although actually a deceptively complex arrangement, second-line conductor, Pavel Klinichev deserved to be booed. The brass section was just ghastly – And at least twice was simply flat – and Klinichev appeared to be more spectator than dictator. Had they rehearsed?

Now this bit of dancing was good and in stark contrast to the two pieces which followed.

This piece is quaint and charming. Maria Allash was wonderful and Vladimir Neporozhny was also extremely impressive. Vyacheslav Lopatin – who I was to think so piss-poor later in the evening – did rather well here. He pulled off an extraordinary number of fouettés. The best performance came from the ridiculously young Ivan Vasiliev who performed with characteristic athleticism.

- Misericordes (known in the west as Elsinore) – choreography by Christopher Wheeldon to Arvo Pärt’s, Symphony Number 3

A change of conductor! A brilliant performance of this music: the Bolshoi Orchestra, which had played like a youth band in High School, now returned to being professional musicians in a world-class House. This music – which I have now heard three times (it was the third time I have seen this piece this year) – stayed with me all week and I just had to download it from iTunes. It made for a very pleasant accompaniment to my overnight train journey back from Kyiv that weekend.

However, while remembering to tug my forelock to the performance of Bolshoi principal soloist, Dmitriy Gudanov, I have to say that the choreography is just not good enough (geddit?).

Having posed the question once before, I now have a conclusion: Wheeldon is just overrated.

The Bolshoi troupe danced this proficiently but with a soul-dead lack of passion. This piece calls for the tautly-suppressed lust and rage of the human body (hello? It’s Hamlet set to dance?): it was like watching robots build an Audi. C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.

This YouTube piece was a better night's dancing performance, but just listen to how bad the brass section is about one third the way through! I was there that night actually... I am worried for the Bolshoi Orchestra:

- In the Upper Room – choreography by Twyla Tharp, to sublime music specially composed by Philip Glass.

I know this piece quite well: this is the … ahem… sixth time I have seen it in the last twelve months.

It was danced by the same cast rotation as always.

This night, however, their performance was a crime against dance.

- Andrey Merkuriev (who usually I highly rate) was utterly atrocious. Was he drunk? I have never seen such lack of precision and his partnering was abysmal: twice he nearly dropped a ballerina.
- All the girls were very weak: even Natalia Osipova, who did a very convincing impression of not having rehearsed and actually not much caring that we guessed she hadn't either
- An uncharacteristically weak performance from Vyacheslav Lopatin. Overall, the ensemble seemed self-obsessed, cynical and indifferent to the fact they were performing in public.

They deserved to be booed off the stage. Had it been London, we would have done! But sometimes, I am reminded, Russians will clap and cheer just about anything: a sort of dancing bear syndrome.

I did not applaud, except briefly, directed at Denis Savin. I have enjoyed watching this young dancer develop over the last four years: I thought him consistently superb in the current production of Romeo & Juliet in repertory and I very much enjoyed him the … ahem… seven times I saw him as Dimka in Shostakovich’s the Bolt.

Mr Savin appeared to be the only performer on stage wholly committed to the faithful performance of Twyla Tharp’s brilliant creation.

Part of a trio, he was ably supported by Anton Savichev and Alexander Smol’yaninov (the latter has potential I think), although at one point I thought they were going to drop Natalia Osipova.

By this point in her ‘performance’, however, I almost willed them to do so.

No, no, no (off topic, but MY topic): do not demonize the pilot

2008-03-07T01:24:00.000+03:00

Amongst my many failures as a human being – I am Catholic, OK? (lovin’ it, BTW) so I embrace my lifetime in sin - is my rather schizoid fear of flying…

Like most Net-literate people, I have seen *that* video. Lufthansa. Hamburg.

No, no, no! The pilot did exactly what he should have. It was a bad flight – and, yeah, truly I would probably have shat myself if I had been on-board – but it was by no means ‘the one’ (you know, ‘the one’ – the flight all frequent flyers believe is their ‘number up’)

Gusty wind is gusty wind. It sucks. But the video is hugely misleading. The wing *did not* scrap the ground: we’d have body bags it if did.

Not a nice flight, but rest assured what you think is ‘impact smoke’ is just jet-back of runway surface water. Clearance levels were really better than they appear, filmed at that angle (I guesstimate above 5-7 feet: not nice, but not fatal).

Neither pilot nor ATC mis-performed and, in the cockpit, the captain would have yelled “TOGA”* in time.

* TOGA = “Take Off & Go Around”. In one client mandate, a rather infamous... um... actually ‘terrorist’ court case, I listened to the Cockpit Voice Recorders (CVRs) of several fatal air incidents – my fear of flying, as a non-pilot, I grant you ridiculously, started then – it is the ones where they yell “TOGA!!!”, followed by “arrgh, shit” etc., that leave a lifelong mark…

But this whole viral YouTube thing is a good example of how YouTube vid’, from a certain angle, displaces the possession of truth. Something, in a bunch of circumstances, we would do well to remember.

“They’re stealing the gas, Nancy, they’re stealing the gas”

2008-03-05T10:30:00.009+03:00

Gazprom is spending a shed-load on some well-connected PRs right now. Friend-of-Dmitry-Peskov, the US PR firm, Ketchum, runs a global program. Now Ketchum is a well-known consumer PR firm in the USA, but something of an also-ran (IMHO) in the rest of the world (and has, BTW, the most irritating *cutesy* web-vid intro on its website, the "greeters", ugh, which appears to assume the readers, the potential clients, are morons). It was lucky to get this, because this is a big, complicated mandate for a largely consumer PR firm, but its long-standing, Russian partner, Michael Maslov, has solid Kremlin connections.

...and breathes in... But through its Omnicom parent, Ketchum has some partners with clout, like the respected Gavin Anderson, the financial spin doctors. The point is, while I like and admire Michael (we alternate to buy each other dinner), what are all these *global* people doing for their fees?

Get the job done guys and, if you can’t get it done (perhaps because – and I know the score and how this works in Russia – the client was obliged to hire you, on instructions, but now ignores you), then quit the mandate. Big fees or no big fees, in the long run you suffer, or your reputation does, if all you do is bank the cash and merely spectate as a client’s global reputation collapses. But what do I know, maybe they’re actually slaving away and a client fight-back is about to materialize. If so, news cycle, guys, news cycle: are you acquainted with them?

What I do know is that I have worked for a company once described as “the most hated company ever to launch an IPO”, and we did stuff. It worked.

Anyway, my 'outburst' comes as the liberal, anti-Russian media in the UK delivers an astonishingly one-sided reportage of the Gazprom-Ukraine dispute (examples here and here).

The western media isn’t telling you that, quite aside from a payment track-record that makes a sub-prime mortgage holder a good bet, Ukraine is *stealing the gas*, siphoning it off, as it transits Ukraine into Western Europe. Where does Naftogaz Ukrainy let it go to? Well let’s just say that the corporate profits of some Ukrainian oligarchs' heavy-industrial businesses are looking surprisingly robust in the face of fuel cost rises over the last two years…

But the key thing is this, the ‘free press’ of the West just doesn’t like the idea that ‘democratic’ Ukraine (“they won Eurovision, they had a revolution, they can do no wrong”) could be anything other than on the side of the angels. The western, liberal media is so bound up in its hate (and I don't think that word is too strong) and suspicion of Russia, it will (and does) self-edit to bring you the story that always puts Russia in a bad light.

- Ukraine stealing gas? Ignore – our readers/viewers need only know that Ukraine is ‘free’ and is ‘pro-western’
- Russia reacts by reducing the flow by the amount it steals? Boo Russia!

This email conversation, yesterday, with a new political friend in the UK sets this in context (I hope):

From: New political friend in the UK
To: Red Exile

…[…]… Also, I saw that the new President of Russia has cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine. What is life like out there when these sorts of things happen?

From Red Exile
To: New political friend in the UK

“Re: Ukraine – LOL. GAZP didn’t cut them off; just reduced the supply by the amount that Ukraine is illegally skimming it off and siphoning to some dodgy industrial clients on the side. Really, the UKR gas company uses the fact that it transits most of Europe’s gas to hide what Naftogaz Ukrainy, the gaz monopoly, steals. This brokers’ note [it is an extract from one issued yesterday by Renaissance Capital – Exile] explains more:

“Event: Ukraine's dispute with Russia over gas supplies took a turn for the worse on Monday (3 Mar) as Gazprom cut supplies 25%, or around 30 mcm/day, in response to non payment by Ukrainian counterparties. NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy later claimed the actual reduction was 35% (46 mcm/day) though Gazprom has not confirmed this. To put the cut in perspective, Interfax reported that Ukrainian consumption was running at around 150-156 mcm/day last week.

“The Financial Times's Web site reported NAK as claiming it has enough gas in storage after a mild winter to withstand such constraints for a month. Even if this claim is exaggerated, it appears that yesterday's developments are a measured increase in pressure by Gazprom, rather than an outright attempt to force the issue to a crisis. The haggling over gas imports and the division of the spoils from the Ukrainian supply market could go on for some time still. Although we continue to believe that Gazprom chairman Dmitry Medvedev will not want his moment of victory in the presidential elections spoiled by this dispute, it is clear that Gazprom has no intention of surrendering out of deference to the political calendar.

“We are concerned by NAK's claim of a larger supply cut than Gazprom has admitted to. Only one figure can be correct, and NAK's record exposes it to the suspicion that it is preparing to resume illicit siphoning, which would seriously damage the aspirations toward integration with Europe that the government is voicing more and more loudly.”

From: New political friend in the UK
To: Red Exile

… […]…It's really bad news if the UK press is reporting this in such an anti-Russian way. I was also surprised by Gordon Brown's response that the new Russian President will be 'judged by his actions' - hardly warm words for an incoming world leader (who happens to be pretty friendly with Iran!)...

Well, yes, indeed.

The title of this post was inspired by this, wonderful West Wing moment:

PS: Just loving the news that Hilary did so well in yesterday’s Primaries: you go girl!

Declaration: the more I see of Obama, the more I think he is too proud, too-pretty-speech-no-substance and just not the person the rest of the world needs to have in the White House right now.

Viewpoint: McCain beats Obama; but only Clinton can beat McCain

Upgradeski – the art of business class travel in Russia

2008-02-29T14:16:00.000+03:00

Written in the business lounge at Moscow Sheremetyevo Terminal 1c (no wifi provided!) but posted from Kyiv

As either reader might recall I don’t much like flying. Terrified wouldn’t be a wholly inappropriate word; which makes one wonder why I have chosen the job I have. Anyway…

This morning I flew to Kyiv (the overnight train wasn’t an option this time, as I had a date at the Bolshoi last night). Being driven out to the airport, the weather deteriorated and I began to get that shuddering yawning that only comes, oddly, when I am very nervous.

The airline I am flying, while using Boeings, uses old ones. Old. Using my handy databank on my PDA, I will verify that the actual plane is between 25 and 30 years old (which is typical for the airline I am flying, for this route): they even still fly one which is now 33 years old.

Since this flight is only 100 minutes airborne we always buy economy class. But I decide to upgrade, at personal expense, to business. There are two reasons of logic for this:

- being personally convinced I will one day die in a plane crash, I would prefer to do it in business class (at least you’ll have more comfort for the last moments before the cleansing, ending bath of fire and the eviscerating shards of metal…)
- And the survival rates in business class are poor. In the event of a serious incident you will die, but it will at least be quick. Behind the curtain is the possibility of agonizing survival; or not quite.

So I arrive at the airport and go to the ticket desk to upgrade.

Sad smile and shrug; says he: “it is impossible. Komputers all no work today. You pay cash?”

Gentle frown before helpful smile, says I: “Gosh. How unfortunate. Yes I pay cash”

Eager school-boy frown, I continue: “Perhaps if I pay cash you can sort out all the paperwork when your computers work again?”

Light-bulb moment: “yes, that might work. You come with me”

We set off and find an official who may be Airline or maybe State but, as is often the case in Russia, is probably a bit of both. I am a друг (friend) apparently. That’s nice.

A sum is ventured (“the official fee of course”) and a small cash transaction occurs discreetly, elegantly: it is what passports are for.

Holding my passport and new ticket (“sorry, mister, no receipt possible; Komputers all no work”), 10 minutes later, this official (partly Airline, partly State) walks me through customs; with much shaking of hands. I am asked no troubling questions.

I am led to check-in and am checked in immediately, ahead of everyone else (mercifully, at this moment all the Komputers seem to have begun to operate again!). I say goodbye to my friend and settle into this lounge, after being assisted through Immigration. I look at my ticket and boarding pass. I am now, it seems, a government official with a VIP pass.

This being me, a thought crosses my mind. If something does occur, and they’re identifying my body, they’ll wonder why, with my British passport and my un-Russian name, I was on seemingly on Russian state business.

That is how conspiracy theories start.

Postscript: Plane registration UR-BVY is, in fact, just 6 weeks short of its 26th birthday.

Quick aside: UKRAINE - What is La Orangina up to now?

2008-02-28T15:14:00.000+03:00

I refer to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of Ukraine. She has this morning adopted that most noteworthy of Ukrainian political tactics 'being rushed to hospital'. Ukrainian politicians are always being rushed to hospital, unavailable from their sick beds, rather than be in a position to do, or not do, anything when put on-the-spot. For Ukraine-watchers, it is a frequent tactic.

The newswire of Business New Europe takes up the story:

"Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is hospitalised with flu, according to statements made by Ukraine's vice prime minister Oleksandr Turchynov on Channel 5... President Viktor Yushchenko had charged her with full repayment of Ukrainian debts to Gazprom before a deadline of 10 a.m., March 3, but her hospitalization looks set to stall this.

""Being a woman of character, she tried to come to work again and was taken to hospital literally from her workplace," Turchynov said. Her hospitalization follows Yushchenko sending a telegram to Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko yesterday, stating that she had failed to adhere to the Moscow agreements and demanding, according to Interfax, she "take urgent and exhaustive measures to pay Ukraine's debt for the gas consumed. The government must fulfill all high-level agreements."

"Tymoshenko was due to personally report to Yushchenko on implementation of his order's execution today at 9 a.m, according to Kommersant. Whereas Yushchenko reached an agreement February with Russia President Vladimir Putin and Gazprom for Ukrainian gas distributor Natftogaz Ukrainy to repay its debts, Tymoshenko has been dragging her feet over implementing the agreement, causing Gazprom to set a deadline for March 3, after which gas supplies to Ukraine will be cut by 25%."

Meanwhile, excellent UKR blog, Foreign Notes, today has a heart-rending little crie de coeur about the stress she is under: 'no wonder she is ill' ...

Why of course, March 3rd.

The day after (Gazprom Chairman) Dmitry Medvedev - who's been trying to cast himself as a progressive - wins the Russian Presidency by a vast landslide, the world is reminded of how horrid is the Russian bear as poor defenceless, pro-Western, 'European' little Ukraine has its gas switched off (sic) again by big, bad, greedy Gazprom.

It's propaganda people: from Langley to Kyiv by way of Wag the Dog.

How dumb do the US-funded Russophobes think we all are? Dumb enough, I guess, dumb enough. Because you just know the wailing the BBC and others will plod along with.

The Mariinsky on tour to Moscow: three one act ballets

2008-02-28T05:44:00.002+03:00

A sell-out house at the Bolshoi on Monday night to see the Mariinsky, on tour to Moscow as part of the Golden Mask festival, dance three one act ballets.

And an interesting choice for the three:

- Serenade; the George Balanchine® piece - no, really, the Balanchine Technique is actually a registered Mark in the USA. A clever thing to choose because the Bolshoi has this piece in repertoire too, so we’re all invited, in the home crowd, from the outset, to compare the Mariinsky to the Bolshoi

- In the Middle, somewhat elevated – a assertively modern piece designed to show that the Mariinsky is cutting edge too (take that Alexey Ratmansky! – who, BTW, is *leaving the Bolshoi* at the end of this year – that’s a shame because I love his work; but the Bolshoi’s not feeling the love, one hears)

- Le Réveil de Flore – a museum-piece confection, in case the traditionalists were still shocked by the previous work, and an unmistakable reminder that the Mariinsky is the senior, Tsarist Russian dance company, so-to-speak

I am not sure that these three fit lovingly together as an ensemble; but as a statement of the Mariinsky’s artistic range and methodic dexterity, it was effective.

Serenade (choreographed by George Balanchine®, set to Tchaikovsky’s 'Serande for Strings in C major' (op.48)

First off I should say that the Mariinsky’s Pavel Bubelnikov conducted (their?) orchestra beautifully and it was as though I heard this piece – which I know well – for the first time.

My program notes included:

- “Balanchine – it’s all about the fingertips!” – well yes, he put great store in the way the dancer use the tips of the fingers and, indeed, the placement of the feet. Slightly artsy, but nice.

- The principal hero: “walks like a cat” – not sure that’s a hugely meaningful insight into the dancing of Denis Firsov but, yes he does

- In the Elegie, which in this balletic presentation of this music is what they end on (reversing it, in the actual order of the Tchaikovsky piece, with the ‘Tema Russo’), there’s a sort of apotheosis moment, with one ballerino and two ballerinas. This includes the wonderful Viktoria Tereshkina (I think, I don’t know the Mariinsky cast by sight the way I do of the Bolshoi’s). I just loved the way one ballerina stands behind the ballerino and just uses her arms and, suddenly, he is a flying angel.

I was also struck how the Mariinsky cast seemed larger, stronger than the Bolshoi cast for this piece and so I perceived Serenade as being much less limply, chocolate-boxey than previously I have judged it. On this showing, it *is* done better by the Mariinsky than the Bolshoi (controversial, but c'est la vie).

In the Middle, somewhat elevated (choreographed by William Forsythe, set to [the then young] Thom Willems’ piece of the same name)

- horrible music! Migraine inducing. Not played by an orchestra, but from tape, we are reminded that the Bolshoi New Stage’s sound engineer should be stripped naked, thrown into the snow and horse-whipped. The architecture of the electronic sound scheme at the New Stage is piss-poor and the speakers kind of slam the music into you.

Actually, heard from the Net, the music sounds much better than what we had to endure on Monday night. Willems and Forsythe are long-term collaborators but I am not sure that the poor sound-staging demonstrated Willems at his best on Monday.

- BUT as “a piece of art” (as a colleague, who also happened to be there that night, said to me), it is quite spectacular. The Soviet style of ballet is very strong, almost athletic, and this is a piece requiring the enormous physical strength of all the performers and suits dancers brought up on the choreography, and under the artistic dictatorship, of Yuri Grigorovich)

- Lead Mikhail Lobukhin was Herculean in this piece and his body produces taut counterbalance-and-pully for his ballerinas, before effortlessly segueing into limpid fluidity. He has that slightly cocky, but beguiling, mixture of graceful elegance, passion and raw attitude, that reminds me of Nureyev at his best.

This piece stayed with me for several days after I saw it. There are several extracts and versions of it on YouTube.

All glory to YouTube, there’s a short exert of the piece nicely introduced by the UK’s now sadly retired prima ballerina, Darcey Bussell. I never saw her dance live… (sniffs). It's been blocked from embedding, but you can find it here.

Le Réveil de Flore (choreographed by the great Marius Petipa, the ‘father of all ballet’, set to a piece of the same name by Riccardo Drigo)

I am not a huge fan of this sort of ballet, but the home crowd laps it up. It is, though, a fine example of high classical ballet, and the Mariinsky does it extremely well. Personally, I think it has more camp than a tribe of Bedouin, but that’s just me.

Ripped from YouTube (and captured by someone naughty who recorded the Mariinsky illicitly – I don’t approve per se, but it is sure useful for these posts) is the opening (and the YouTuber has some useful notes on the ballet actually, if you double-click on the link to the original YouTube page):

While not a triumph, it was a successful exhibition night for the Mariinsky. Artistically, I am not sure the Bolshoi is yet quaking in its boots, but in terms of technique, one is reminded that even the mighty Bolshoi has better not be complacent. The Mariinsky demonstrated technical excellence on Monday.

Advance Notice (warning): It is going to be Russian ballet week on 'Moscow Rules'

2008-02-26T02:06:00.001+03:00

... because we are in the middle of the Golden Mask festival.

I have a backlog of postings.

I am trying to edit a post on 'The Seagull / Chaika' I saw last Friday, at the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko. The draft post is called "De-coding the choreography: sex, death and Chekhov in the ballet of John Neumeier". Truly, Kids, it'll be worth the wait... LOL!

I also want to review the Mariinsky performance at the Bolshoi tonight. How was it? Well, as they say in my part of Italy: "cosi, cosa... cosici"

Some of it reminded the world St Petersburg is very intellectual, natch. Some of it, though, reminded us that St Petersburg hasn't had a compelling, new idea since 1932... Anyway...

Below is the Mariinsky's equivalent of the Bolshoi's In the Upper Room (I have written about the latter endlessly on this blog, so use the search function!): In the Middle, somewhat elevated. Of more to be written later this week.

(Piece from Russia's Kultura TV)

PS: And tonight via YouTube I learn that Andrey Merkuriev - one of the Bolshoi principal soloists I most admire, only joined 2 years ago from the Mariinsky. I learned it because he is in the YouTube snipplet I have included by way of teaser (this is about 1/4 of the way through the piece).

Why Russia is right to feel the sky may fall in on its head

2008-02-21T21:53:00.006+03:00

As you may have noticed, it has all gone a bit Battlestar Galactica in the world right now. Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces blog is the hero of the hour, for nuclear holocaust hobbyists and those playing catch-up alike. Just brilliant.

Russia understandably kicks off a storm because, for all the post-Soviet rearmament rhetoric, the Russian space program is not what it wants it to be. Also, the Russian nuclear ICBM targeting system is satellite-dependent of course. Ivan-Ivanovich has some nice big, shiny, glow-in-the-dark, new city-killers – all of which are absolutely useless if, suddenly, the forefront of big boys’ war really moves into space.

Because remember:

- 1.5 million men under arms is irrelevant given that every play-book on the planet assumes that military conflict with Russia goes nuclear within the first 24-hours
- And 1.1 million of those men are sullen conscripts of uncertain efficacy, maybe over 25% of which even the most optimistic Russian commander reckons are utterly useless

No military satellites = Russia left defenseless. That’s the simple, brutal truth.

IMHO, Russia *talks* anti-US/NATO threats to Russian territory, but this is misdirection. It is just simply incomprehensible that NATO would ever be the aggressor; even if Moscow bombed Tbilisi (which I think will happen, anyway).

But China decides to invade east of the Urals? That is what the Kremlin really (rightly) fears, says I, one day hence. Russia is making way too much money out of the Chinese market right now to say so publicly, but it fears its eastern neighbour; just as the EU/NATO fears its, in turn. Why would China do that?

For China, finding fresh water is, by far, the biggest macro-political, or rather, civilization risk it faces. Oh yes – on just a “where is our fresh water” scenario – that has to be a meaningful statistical possibility that between now (OK, not 'now', but 'five minutes into the as-yet-unembraced future') and 2040 a desperate China seeing a demographically weak Russia just goes for land east of the Urals. And killing Russia's military saltellites is how they start to do it. Moscow knows that. This is what military planning is all about (and why it is so cool). You issue press statements attacking Washington DC, knowing Beijing gets the message too.

PS: What I heard last Friday, from a St Pete’s Siloviki clansman, in serious state employ, was 100% the complete opposite of the Moscow Times front page today. I shall – at risk of (more) ridicule – make this prediction: Mayor Luzhkov will retire by the end of 2008.

PPS: I posted before – actually, if I may say so within 8 hours of its release I think - about the Obama/YouTube song that may well be (wrongly) described in history as the zeitgeisty turning point in his campaign.

Don'tchajustluv this spoof? Pure, adulterated and wicked, splendid genius. I cried laughing:

PPPS: Apropos my last post, my long-suffering employer points out that, au contraire, in the event of crash-evac a private plane would have been guaranteed for me but, since “you are always prattling on in your blog about your fear of flying, we thought you would actually appreciate going overland! And - hello? - you’ve also blogged before about the wonderful security service we generously provide you”.

Point taken. They’re lovely. I'm indulged. Now feel like spoilt selfish git. Also must stop writing like male Bridget Jones. That ship may have sailed...

Another reason to remain cheerful about Russia

2008-02-19T22:02:00.001+03:00

Yesterday a colleague emailed me:

“[the client’s] CEO was shot (but not killed) last week, so the [deal] is a bit postponed :( ”

(I think adding the emoticon is a nice finishing touch, don’t you?)

This one line email gave me a bit of a boost as:

- The guy lived, right?
- It has been ages since a client of mine has been shot; years in fact, which illustrates that the so-called Wild, Wild East is becoming a normal business environment just like everywhere else (oh yes! Brittle smile… )

In fact, this email came from our Kyiv office, which is an even more important reason to be cheerful for Russians therefore. No nasty shootings with our Russian clients, oh no! But in touchy-feely, oh-so-democratic Ukraine? Um… business-by-bullet is still occasionally an issue there.

Probably there is no more eloquent testimony to President Putin’s success in bringing order and safety to Russia than the fall in the numbers of (intentional) corporate killings. And when it happens, it’s screamed from the front pages and everyone is very shocked. Actually I bet business-by-bullet is more common in the USA than here…

PS: the actual story of who shot the client and how, is… er… very funny, but there is no way I can repeat it here. Just suffice it to say long-liquid-lunches and an Uzi-semi don’t mix: as ‘props’, to make a point in a post-lunch debate, they are more ruinous than rhetorical.

Actually, come to think of it, our ‘track record’ is pretty good here. Racking my brains I don’t think we’ve lost anyone ‘on-the-job’/client-wise due to corporate hits; excluding, a tad before my time, an incident in Georgia.

There, I think, the client CFO was murdered and we instigated, for our people, a ‘crash-evac’ (as one past employer of mine called them); or fast extraction. You know the drill: beefy body-guards, armour-plated fast cars, private plane… Damn! Very cool…

Well, at least that is how a previous employer conceptualized the process. Not sure about my current one though (bus timetable and overnight train to Finland is perhaps more likely if trouble came my way… and I would have to buy the bus ticket).

Other than "shots fired!" (a shoot-out by my chauffered-Merc) in Kazakhstan, in the 1990s’ aluminium wars – advice that day to me from then British Ambassador: “We cannot guarantee your safety and we recommend you leave the country. Today please, if you can.” - and lock-down / petrol bombs in Haiti, my life has actually been rather sadly suburban.

Although there was the anonymous delivery of a ‘black silk mourning’ tie to my office on my arrival – just weeks after I shafted a well-known Russian oil company on a big deal in Turkey – and a petrol-bombing in my elitny street, one summer’s night. But, hey, that happens everywhere, right?

Favourite word of the day? ДЕМШИЗА – Demshiza; a nice mélange of democrat and schizophrenic. It’s what United Russia-types call the pro-Kasparov loons. Seemingly, with cause.

Awaiting the grim certainty of revenge

2008-02-17T22:29:00.002+03:00

(The Cartoon above – and elsewhere in this post – is from the Opinion page of the London Daily Telegraph. This is from 14th February; spoofing a movie poster seen in London right now).

Tonight, with gunshots into the air, Kosovo declared independence. I wish this pseudo-State, or its people, no harm. But I do not welcome it. As I have said before, I supported maintaining the territorial integrity of Serbia. As I type this there is sporadic, maybe even half-hearted, rioting outside the US Embassy in Belgrade.

Of more consequence will be Moscow’s response. On the face of it, this is a major (and personal) foreign policy failure for President Vladimir Putin, some will say. Personally, I think that harsh: the die was cast in the last, chaotic months of the Yeltsin misrule. By the time VVP had established internal order in Russia, the Russian state was far too behind, with too few moves, to succeed in the Balkan game.

But there will be a response from Moscow, all the same. Just weeks from the electoral coronation of his handpicked replacement, President Putin, will take deeply, red-mistly, personally the West’s united ignoring of Russia’s voice. If only for his personal sense of dignity, the Russian President will demand a price is paid. Recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – and thus fracturing Georgia – is just the start of it. Personally, I think it gives more impetus to create a second USSR, starting with the integration of Belarus and Russia; and the incorporation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The grandstanding President Saakashvili of Georgia – never knowingly under-exposed on CNN this one – will mewl and howl over the airwaves; but in truth no-one will take a single meaningful step to stop Russia if it does this. Who would be so stupid? OK, so the Harry Potter of global diplomacy might be; this would not surprise me. I suspect things will be become clearer in March. Revenge being a dish best served cold and all that…

Can anyone tell me what was up in central Moscow this weekend? After four years here I am used to random deployments of troops, but there were just so many in town this weekend. Taking the Tverskaya underpass from the Actor’s Gallery to home, there were about 50 Militia conscripts herded under here, soaking up the warmth. In their super-padded blue jackets, these boys (who all looked about twelve), momentarily appeared to be the hybrid offspring of a teletubbie and a smurf. However, around the corner from my street were two truck-loads of OMON. Now these dead-eyed, muvver-fukkers get my repect. I have no doubt they would disembowel their firstborn, if so ordered by the Chekists.

It has been a weekend when I am very conscious of the few ‘touching points’ between Russia and the west right now. There are few certainties to hold on to and I sense something nasty coming our (expat) way. At the top of my blog, it says my life is a ‘slalom’ between the politics of east and west. And this is increasingly true.

While they all pretend to be too sophisticated to be duped by it, the slow drip-drip of state media poison has noticeably changed the way my staff relate to the idea of the west (other than a place to shop and vacation; which they all do with enthusiasm).

Just a week ago, one young staffer emailed the office an offhand comment about ‘western companies raping Russia’ – this from a lad whose salary, all paid 'white', with health insurance etc, has more than tripled in three years. We’re the firms raping Russia? ‘Cos all those oligarchs have done so much for the well-being of their fellow-citizens…

Next time I get a lesson in Russian patriotism from him I must remember to ask when he is planning to fulfill his conscription duty…

Then, a couple of nights ago one of my senior staffers emailed me (about UK-Russian relations): “Give me a break! We've always been enemies and will remain enemies. Even Americans are much closer to us than Brits.”

To which I felt the need to reply:
"Oh. Fuck off dearest mate [he's one of the few staffers I would call a mate and he knows I swear at him with English Middle-class, fruity affection].

"That’s balls, as even the briefest consideration would remind you, it was the USA that murdered the USSR in the Afghan war. The UK just provided tea and crumpets for that dispute.

"Like most Russians, you are still beguiled to think that Britain is your enemy because you have read too much ‘Great Game’ nonsense (and the televised novels of Boris Akunin).

"That said, like the Roman Empire, both Russia and the USA are two ‘empires’ whose sole raison d'être has been that the state serves a primarily military-elite. You are right: the USA and the post-USSR are the same: and as D H Lawrence (a good socialist, and anti-communist and hero of mine) once so memorably put it: “between the two blades of that pair of scissors, we shall all be cut to bits”.

A political friend in London – reading over this exchange -sagely reminded me of what Lord Palmerston said: “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.”

The anti-western, default thinking of Generation Putin is becoming more deeply entrenched and is not going to go away. Those western governments and analysts who think the risks of a sabre-rattling bear reduce with Putin exit stage left? Completely misreading, they are, the changes in Russian society.

To cheer myself up, though, I have spent the afternoon downloading, from iTunes, digitally re-mastered arias by some of the great, now sadly dead, sopranos. And in my head is a civilized, safe place, where no-one can get me.

The current market rate for bribes in Russia – an English translation – and Russia: has it got the power?

2008-02-14T22:03:00.000+03:00

I had a staffer put this together for me today (posted alongside); the current (alleged) tariff for bribery in Russia (overall I think it is 15-20% light of real costs, but that is IMHO, so there).

Across my screen today I also saw a Deutsche Bank piece:

Electricity and heat supply outages across Russia
Deutsche Bank

February 14, 2008

There have recently been a number of accidents across the country resulting in temporary electricity and heat supply outages. Interfax reports that an equipment failure at the Carevskaya power substation in the Astrakhan region led to the electricity supply for almost 36,000 people being interrupted. Separately, the Krasnoyarsk governor blamed poor maintenance works at Eniseiskaya TGK for a number of failures in heat supply this winter, Interfax reports. There was also a fire at CHP-1 (TGK-14) in Ulan-Ude.

In our view, nearly all these accidents were the result of more than a decade of underinvestment in the sector [Exile's emphasis]. However, thanks to privatization and the liberalization of the sector, a significant amount of money has been raised for capex needs in almost all of sub-sectors. Nevertheless, such accidents highlight the technological risks of the sector and as most of the grid's and generation equipment is worn out, we cannot exclude there being further outages in the future. -1-140208

Heretofore, Anatoly Cubais’s great ‘unbundling’ of the Russian power monopoly has made middle-ish management, of variable talent (variable, because some are world-class), rather staggeringly rich. It is to be seen if it will be remotely effective in keeping Russian lights or furnaces burning bright (let alone Moscow AirCon systems running cool in summer) in the years to come.

Although not presently (yet) directly a fee-related interest, I am following the Russian GenCo-Distribution systems carefully (I cut my industrial-political teeth, as a lobby-ling, on the European gas and nuclear power sectors).

In 2009, I think one of the more conceptually interesting IPOs will be Inter RAO: the electricity trading arm of the dying behemoth, RAO UES. As I have written for someone elsewhere (not on the web), hydro-power from Kyrgyzstan, grid-linked to Russia, looks a good PPP/PFI investment bet. Ditto, strategic partnerships for foreign firms in the GenCo sector, prepared for an ‘RPI+/-x’ long-term-like concession.

Indeed, if Europeans can put aside their mono-dimensional bleating about ‘energy security’ for just a tiny moment, they will see (as I write in one of those rather dry, slightly neo-con-ish, US geo-political journals next month):

‘Energy security is a two-way street. Although we think of Russia as an exporter of oil and gas it is, and will increasingly become, an electricity importer. Over the three electricity Russian IPOs/privatisations we have worked on [in 2007] during the break up of the RAO UES monopoly, we see how truly inter-connected Europe’s energy markets and energy best interests are.

“Russia’s own electricity needs mean that it is already importing electricity from Kazakhstan; and shortly will import – in scale – hydro-electric power from Kyrgyzstan. The RAO UES subsidiary, INTER RAO (itself a likely IPO candidate in, perhaps, 2009) is the fascinating business that imports all this power, and looks enviously at the possibility of importing electricity from the generators of Central Europe; if only it can raise the billions of Euros necessary to build the inter-connecters between Russia and the CEE nations [Exile: which is now the reason why Gazprom is looking to buy European GenCos -they are buying Russia’s energy security for 2015+ ].

“So let us all conclude that energy security is a two-way street: raw materials in one direction and electricity in the other. In fact, in any debate concerning energy security it is good to remember that very few people come to the debate objectively and without an agenda. The EU institutions want to control one of the largest aspects of the EU combined economy, national sovereign determination of which member states have jealously guarded. Russia is frequently criticised but perhaps should do more to put forward its own case.”

As is unfathomably often the case for hydrocarbon-rich countries, Russia is hydrocarbon rich, but electricity poor (the same is true, BTW, for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela and even Kazakhstan).

And in Russia, this electricity ‘poverty’ is really beginning to show. This is an area that takes more than six months’ central pump-priming, highly visible, Kremlin investment to cure. Not least as, for Russia, GenCo infrastructure is only part of the challenge. It’s the ‘wires’ and the sub-stations too: now that’s fiddly and relatively expensive to do and… er… becoming really quite vital to medium-long term, Russian economic vibrancy.

PS: understand this sector and you see that Kazakhstan’s interest in buying some of Westinghouse is, actually, very, very clever.

The price of doing business here?

2008-02-14T01:59:00.001+03:00

After a great weekend in the North of England, which was looking wonderful in uncharacteristally bright Spring (?) sunshine, I came back to flu and have been in bed asleep for most of the last two days. I don't know what they put in Russian Coldrex, but Damn! it is good.

While I have been asleep, a colleague forwarded me the table here, which appeared in Vedomosti on Monday. The article and table is about the current going rate for bribes people have to pay to do business here in Russia. The original article, in Russian, is here (and the table is more legible if you click on the link in the article).

But the point is: $250,000 for proposing a law (yeah, but a good $1-2 mill to get it passed mate); a 30-40% cut for commercial participation in one of the Priority National Projects; $20,000 retainer to TV news for criticism of targeted bureaucrats; etc. These are allegedly the going 'market rates' for bribery presently. They feel about right to me.

Although, in my experience (anecdotal, natch), TV news editorial-judgments are becomming a lot more expensive than that; and to get your man spotlighted positively on one of the main Russian current affairs programs? $150-200k I am told.

Although, oddly, this sort of thing has never crossed my path directly; from what I am hearing bribery rates have gone up for Russian businesses recently, as the current ruling elite are looking to... ahem...monetarize their experience, just in case political change will follow Medvedev into the Kremlin. As has been written well elsewhere, there may not be much of a democratic race on in Russia at the moment; but the clan wars amongst the Siloviki are as hard-fought as anything right now between Obama and Hilary.

This story about the market for bribery, did remind me of the depressing front-page lead in the Moscow Times yesterday, on the rise of 'raidering' in Russia. Now generally, 'raidering' is something I associate with Ukraine, where it is rampant. I had thought it was on the wane in Russia; and I think it is in the larger corporate sector; and not something I think will greatly affect western businesses. But it does, on the other hand, provide more ammunition for those who would say that Russia has become a state which exists by, for and of the modern-era Chekists. And, to the extent that anyone serious about doing business in Russia needs to have employed at least one seriously-well connected ex-KGB/FSB officer, I guess I reluctantly agreeing.

Something for the weekend

2008-02-07T13:08:00.000+03:00

So now I am off to the UK, family business, and this is what I have packed for my weekend reading:

- “Continuity in Russian regions: How ‘Operation Successor’ is working in key regions and what it means for international investors - Tatarstan” – and note I have finally learned how properly to spell Tatarstan in the Roman alphabet!
- “Distributed Influence – Quantifying the impact of social media” - an Edelman white paper
- “A power audit of EU-Russia relations” – a policy piece from the European Council on Foreign Relations, one of its co-authors is Mark Leonard. He and I once got cautiously drunk, as I recall, at a Labour Party annual Conference - 1996 or 1997; in Blackpool or Brighton (they all merge into one hideous memory)
- “Social costs of smoking and the impact of tobacco excise duties”; an academic study from Hungary (!) – it comes with a handy second volume of Excel spreadsheet data
- “Value at the bottom of the pyramid” (a refutation of ‘common misconceptions about doing business with low-income consumers’) - from the IE Business School in Madrid.

And I wonder why there is so little joy in my life… LOL!

Off topic: Stamina required! But then, On Topic, Russian economics

2008-02-06T22:32:00.000+03:00

Since the man who is going to win the Russian Presidential Election, by a landslide, doesn’t really feel the need to campaign, I wanted to post some personal observations about Super Tuesday, since it is the only electoral ‘race’ I am going to witness this year.

As the Democrats seem set for a long-drawn out slog to determine their candidate three factors will become increasingly important.

Money talks: after an initial barn-storming start the Clinton campaign has been slower to raise money; whereas Obama has drawn in millions in the last three months. Using CNN’s last quarterly data, it looks as though Clinton should be pretty safe; but in the last six weeks, Obama has raised more healthily than she. Hillary Clinton did better than ‘Big Mo’ predictions (including mine) suggested; and this may help to shake the money tree some more for her. But in a long campaign for the nomination, Obama may be advantaged by the fact that he will be able outspend Clinton in the later stages of this race.

Clinton as at end Q4 2007 (CNN):

Obama as at end Q4 2007 (CNN):

This Democrat desperate spending spree is great news, BTW, for the Republican nominee, come the… you know… actual General Election.

Lack of downtime can lose elections: I have personal experience of this! The Democrats may find they do not have a clear winner by the end of May. This is a disaster for the party! There is every chance that, when we get to the Democrat Convention (Denver, August), it will be a ‘brokered convention’. The eventual nominee will be exhausted – mentally as much as physically. Meanwhile, the Republican candidate – looking more likely to be McCain – will have had a good 2-3 three months to rest (no need to campaign while the Democrats are still slugging it out) mentally and physically, and hone their national campaign message. Hate Bush as many US citizens do; there is now a growing possibility that McCain can beat Clinton, and I think even more likely, Obama, either of whom may both enter the race weakened.

Money talks here too. As the Democrats soak up more and more cash from their wealthy backers for the Primaries, that necessarily presents an opportunity cost for the General.

The White stuff : Early break-out stats suggest Obama is gaining white votes – and how sad that this should be a factor – but he is still to break 40% of white voters in the Democrat primaries to date. Again, this is good for the Republicans. Especially if McCain – once he has the nomination – campaigns on a ’50-state’, more centrist strategy. The Right will hate this, but they will fund it rather than see Obama in the White House.

US voters enjoy balancing the ticket – one party for President and another for Capitol Hill. I think the odds of a McCain one-term Presidency, albeit with a Democrat-led Senate and House, are looking shorter.

PS: Exile says Huckabee for President in 2012; because even if he can do it, McCain can only be a one-term President. And Huckabee’s knee-capping of the Romney campaign yesterday? That must have earned him the VP-slot in a McCann candidacy (nicely delivering the South as it does too – and keeps Anne Coulter-types off of McCain’s back).

Russia today? Nada caught my eye except: rotten inflation stats for January and a shrinking current account surplus; with RenCap forecasting the current account surplus will fall to zero by end 2009. Like I have said before; supply-side economics are out of kilter with domestic demand and 1-2 years from now, the Russian government is finally going to wake up to this fact, against generally weaker commodity prices: which is 1-2 years too late. As we enter 2010, ‘cheap money’ in Russia is going to be hard to find; the major western economies will still be weak and so where will inward investment in Russia come from then?

Does any of this matter? LOL! Maybe not. But put it this way. If I was the head of a global hedge fund, on a quarter-to-quarter view? I would now be overweight Russian stock to the global equity index I use and would increase my tolerance to Ruble exposure.

But, if I was global chief investment officer of a pension fund? I would be looking at a structural position underweight Russian equities, compared to the global index I use, and much less tolerant of RUR exposure, over the medium term. And, yes, I might be buying some more gold.

Arts update on the Bolshoi… oh, and something new on Tartarstan

2008-02-05T23:03:00.000+03:00

I have finally caught up with the sadly inevitable news that the Bolshoi’s main stage – under restoration since 2005 – will have its opening delayed yet again. At least, though, I shall still (just) be here to enjoy the old girl again. Before it closed, I only went there about a dozen times and, in retrospect, it is kind of worrying that the cracks in the building were so bad we were all, in fact, just one overly-resonant top ‘C’ from the great chandelier coming crashing down on us all in the Stalls.

And to think much of the real damage was done to the old girl from the ground-crackingly deep extension being built next door at Tsum. I hope someone has sent Tsum the appropriate bill…

Bolshoi snobs decry the ‘New Stage’, where the Bolshoi hangs out these days. Actually I quite like it. Sight-lines and acoustics are fine. Well I usually sit Stalls’ rows 1-5 for ballet; 5-10 for opera, so from there it’ll always look and sound superb.

There hasn’t been a huge amount on this month to grab my fancy; but in the last week of February I have booked:

The Mariinsky (formerly known as the Kirov - the naming of it is a tale in itself), on tour at the Bolshoi. Thusly to reignite that old debate, ‘which is the better ballet troupe? Bolshoi or Kirov?’

I have also scored, from my usual dealer, a night of three one act ballets – including the Twyla Tharp (about which I have written here, here and here). I am conceivably hooked on this piece.

In between I am going to the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko to see (fourth time?) them dance Chaika.

Tartarstan - a quick shout out: spin-merchant, Mmd, has published a regional guide to Tartarstan. Fascinating place: and to think at one time its secession was considered much greater a threat to the survival of the Russian Federation than Chechnya’s. Much redistribution of assets there right now and plenty of investors piling in. My humble advice? You need brass balls to invest there. Potentially very high returns 'tis true; potentially, also, huge political risk 2009 onwards: ‘velvet-reprivatisation’ definitely a risk.

Trivia: it seems that Barak Obama and the Tartastani share nearly the same catch motto (Buldırabız! - We can!), or so it seems…

Nerd that I am, I am staying up until the small hours to watch the exit polls come through from the USA.

Off-topic but worth it: political zeitgeist for the post-hiphop generation

2008-02-03T20:27:00.000+03:00

If I were a US Citizen, I would undoubtedly be a registered Democrat, and a political-factoid nerd. I love elections, any election - I would run a campaign for City dog-catcher if asked - but US elections are the summit of the hack-heap. By inclination, I am a Hillary fan. Sadly, then (in that context), I suspect Barak Obama has the big mo' and will triumph on Super Tuesday.

Ahead of then, this has popped up on YouTube: 'Ich bin ein Berliner' for the hip-hop generation:

Expat postcard: moody crustacea, bootboy rebels and guns

2008-02-03T19:07:00.000+03:00

I am in a strop with Arkady Novikov: Moscow’s eponymous Restauranteur. Knowingly or not I kind of live in his elitny eateries, for both business and pleasure. Last night I was having a crab-fest at Nedal'nij Vostok – Kamchatka crab at its best – with a tiny splurge of Beluga which, if not ecologically-PC, was damned fine. Life in Moscow without Novikov restaurants would be much less onctueuse.

Nedal'nij Vostok is cuisine-butch. Go for one of the tables near the central, open-plan kitchen and watch the kitchen floor-show. Watching a live lobster being sashimied is a curious experience. The chef took one lobster after another, lovingly stroked each down the back of its shell with the blunt side of the knife, before dispatching it, Roman-style, tip of the knife’s blade quickly through the thorax. Then he sliced the still-moving lobster in half, from jaw to tip of the tail. After being bisected, the legs still move for quite a while. My fellow diners were horrified, but I was fascinated, and vaguely recall its movements are more reflexive than brain-driven. Aesthetically this is gunk-free slaughter.

So why the strop with Novikov? My favourite deli in town, Globus Gourmet, has stopped accepting Novikov discount cards. Added to the fact that neo-Novikov joints, Vanil and Indus, have also stopped taking the cards, frankly I have to question why I shell out RUR 10,000 for it (10% off restaurant bills, 5% off shops, caterers and …er…a luxury florist). My card expires in April and I am not sure I shall bother to renew it.

The other day, after a breakfast meeting in (Novikov's) Vogue Café, I decided to drop into the Marriott Aurora Hotel to have my shoes cleaned by the boot-black there. Every two weeks or so I send my housekeeper to the Aurora’s boot-black, with all my boots and shoes (other than the ones I am wearing) to be cleaned. It is an indulgence of the essential, ordinary kind. Especially in a city whose streets are as filthy as Moscow’s in winter.

Incidentally I am nervous about the phrase boot-black: I hope it means ‘one who blackens boots’, rather than ‘the black person who cleans your boots’. The phrase being originally American, I am uncertain as to its proper etymology. But, anyway, bootblack is the phrase I use: shoe-shine boy sounds ridiculous after-all.

My capitalist-but-liberal sensitivity is enhanced by the fact that, in Kyiv, the rather ancient bootblack I prefer is, actually, black (remember seeing a non-white face in Kyiv is rare indeed). And fascinating.

Originally he was a Moscow-backed rebel leader fighting for the MPLA in Angola in the 1980s, but then he found himself in exile in the Moscow of the USSR. Somehow he ended up in Kyiv, with wife and child, just as the USSR collapsed and his Moscow-pension disappeared with the Great Struggle. So there he is today – half a planet a way from the home from which he is exiled and can never go back, his patron-state having disappeared – seemingly utterly forgotten. And now he cleans shoes at the Dnipro Hotel in Kyiv. He does an excellent job, BTW. Tip generously. His life story is well worth hearing.

PS: go the Dnipro hotel only for your shoes to be cleaned. It is an awful dive: more whorehouse than hotel; although very popular with regional government officials; Scandinavian engineers and – oddly – Italian importers. The restaurant is Soviet-era ghastly.

This week has proven very long, but somewhat typical of Moscow-business-season. I particularly enjoyed the 20.30 meeting (which went on until 23.45) close by the airport; at the office of a mini-oligarch. I counted 7 armed guards from entrance to boardroom: you don’t see as many armed guards as you used to in Moscow offices. The city is getting soft. Or more subtle.

Potemkin Economics? And a wry aside way off topic…

2008-01-30T23:01:00.001+03:00

A friend and colleague points me to remarks made by Prime Minister Victor Zubkov, at a meeting with the management of the Syktyvkar timber processing business:

"You are in great luck - you run your business in the most stable country. The financial crisis [elsewhere] in the world will, of course, affect the operations of many enterprises abroad.

“You work in a stable country, with a stable political system, stable taxes: that is why your business is on the way up"

And who can blame the Russians for enjoying the economic weakness of America, as they also take advantage of US foreign policy log-jam in Iraq?

But two sets of stats out of Russia give pause for thought and remind us that Potemkin economics is never far away, as a risk. Beyond hydrocarbons – whose pricing can be highly volatile if world demand falters on US consumer-led recession, not least in terms of demand for Russian raw materials from China – I think that the big economic risk for Russia 2010-2015 is that the manufacturing base won’t cope with burgeoning demand and that this will see the benefits of consumer demands leak away to overseas manufacturers.

The early signs of this may already have begun, if the Institute for the Economy in Transition is to be believed (noting, of course, that the IET is a vehicle for Yegor Gaidar, whose views are hardly neutral). At the same time, Russian wage inflation continues to soar; way out of kilter to GDP growth.

This is good, at this stage of the election cycle, for the ruling elite to shoe-in Dmitry Medvedev as President, on a landslide victory. In the long term, however, the combination of soaring wages and manufacturing capacity growth seriously lagging behind, leads to structural mess in supply side economics, and doesn’t bode well for President Putin’s laudable, long-term economic ambition: diversification of Russia’s economic base (away from oil, gas and metals).

An increasingly wealthy, free-spending Russian consumer is good electoral politics – and makes the retail sector and retail/warehousing real estate a strong buy – but it may lead to economic gains being lost to ramping inflation.

Now don’t get me wrong. Russia in 2008 will still bring in one of the world’s best GDP growth performances in 2008. But it won’t be entirely unaffected by the recession in the USA and Europe. For the reasons mentioned elsewhere, I would guess GDP growth in 2008 will come in under the Russian government’s forecast of 6.4%: I would say closer to 5%. Inter alia, this does suggest a tighter leash on P/E-led valuations for stocks on the Russian stock exchanges.

Off topic?

Ah yes. The humiliation and fall of UK Conservative MP, Derek Conway (who decided the public purse was a good way of ‘keeping it in the family’ and whose political career began its death tonight).

Some years ago – when he was between seats in Parliament having lost his seat in the 1997 UK General Election, he was casting about for a job in political lobbying. Not getting one he decided to go it alone. At the time he said: “I have met these New Labour Consultants and basically all they know how to do is pour gin & tonic for Peter Mandelson” (approximate quote as I can’t find the original).

He was talking about me.

The prat had come to me for a job and – not thinking much then of his brain or his understanding of what people like me do for clients – I politely sent him on his way. His sneering comments came a week later and, Tory mates at Westminster (I had, and have, a few bizarrely) pointedly said he had me in mind...

Well now, mate, you can pour me a G&T.

In pursuit of further randomness

2008-01-28T22:41:00.000+03:00

At 04.00 am the snow-plough that helpfully clears our streets of this weekend’s heavy fall slightly prangs the Lexus parked below my bedroom window: its owners sleep more heavily than me so I listen, sing-songly, to the car alarm for 24 minutes (2 ½ minutes of alarms, in nicely varying tones, followed by a thirty second interval of silence, before it starts all over again).

As the snow-plough withdrew, taking what I guess was a fender with it; it made a soothingly crunching sound…

So, 04.09 am, I find myself thinking about ruble re-valuation – apropos yesterday’s post – it comes to me that there is a very good reason for Russia to re-value.

The Ruble is storming in the forex markets; and structurally has lots of strength to come. Russia hates the US dollar ideologically and, given its last four years’ performance against the RUR, Russia hates it financially as well.

An OPEC-for-gas between Russia, Iran and Qatar (that gas-field with a flag) is looking more likely. But would they want to price gas in USD? They would not. If you had an OPEC-for-gas it would be their choice as to their pricing currency. The Euro is a possibility, but ideologically, the Euro is hardly more popular with either Russia or Iran.

Why not piece gas/MMbtu in Rubles? You revalue the Ruble – at, let’s say 1 RUR = US$4 – and then it makes a good reserve currency for gas. And Iran would love it. Qatar would not object. Ruminations on Russia had a pithy comment on why an OPEC-for-gas should not work; but since when did economics get in the way of ideology?

And why not change the reserve currency for oil? You see Venezuela complaining? (actually, I think China and Japan would, so scrap that). And friends in the Gulf tell me the Emirates and Saudi are sick of their currencies, pegged to oil prices of course and therefore to the USD, slip-sliding as well.

The Ruble as the reserve currency for hydro-carbons? Oh yes. Definitely a possibility. And a *huge* political win in Russia. Instant hero-status for a newly-minted President Medvedev: “Russia *is* the beating heart of the world economy” etc. Fab spin.

Separately, a great brokers’ note from RenCap today, on matters Ukrainian:

“The government has prepared a decree allowing customs and the tax service to countermand 'illegal' court rulings….

“The aim of the new measure is to reduce corruption in the judiciary, sending a message to bribers that the rulings for which they pay will not be enforced, and to judges that they will be held more accountable in future.

“Though the intention is laudable, we think any measure that allows court rulings to be ignored, no matter how exceptional the circumstances, is a fundamental threat to the rule of law and gravely misguided. Unless the government provides substantial clarifications as to how its idea will work, it risks sending the wrong signals to the investment community and electorate alike.”

Personal experience reminds me – having had a client on the shit-end of this stick – you can buy a Ukrainian Supreme for about $50k a decision. Remind me, why was the Orange revolution such a break with the past?

Democracy, with out an independent judiciary, is not progress at all. There is no democracy without rule of law. And there is, literally, more rule of law in Russia.

Blogging tonight in my usual haunt – memo to self: sort out home Wi-fi – I can barely hear myself think. There are only 11 people in the bar. Six of them, sitting together, are damn near shouting. Every other word is ‘f******’; they are drunk and being staggering sexist; indifferent to the fact that all the staff speak fluent English. These are braying, arrogant, appalling expats: 40 minutes in their company and I am coming round to Zhirinovsky’s POV.

PS: if you are about to do business with CB Richard Ellis in Moscow, tell them to have their boys learn how to behave when out in public (the downside, boys, of loud, drunken conversations is we know who you are!). Although illuminating to hear one of you say: “I won’t get out of bed for any deal worth less than 1,000 sqm to me”; which at current market rates I calculate is about $83,000. Tossers!

Three more random facts of life in Moscow

2008-01-27T21:47:00.000+03:00

There’s an open-air pop concert on Pushkinskaya right now. Of course there is! After all, it is only minus 3 out there. I am blogging at the bar of Scandinavia: my internet router at home has died and I am taking advantage of their free (and fast) Wi-fi. While down the street, on Tverskaya, by the old Telegraph building, the regular rock band is holding its weekly impromptu concert; it draws a hardy but enthusiastic following which somehow manages to dance despite the lethal sheet black ice all over the sidewalk today.

Separately, rumors from two sources (one close to the CBR) reach me that, in April, the Central Bank will revalue the ruble. By 100 times! (this would be the eighth 'modern' Ruble.) This has been whispered before and April would make perfect timing. How better for President Medvedev to settle in and underline Russia’s roaring new strength than tell people ‘the new Ruble is worth US $4!’ (and would buy GBP £2). We’re talking new banknotes here, of course, rather than an excuse to place a big play on the forex markets.

Of course, ever trying to seek the underlying meaning of things – and you know you’ve been here too long when you do that about everything – I wonder whether such an announcement will be tied into a development about that much-heralded Federal Union of Russia and Belarus. And if that happens, then what will VVP plan to do then (new constitution, new career possibilities?)? Well, I'll stop theorizing there…but the next Belarus-Russian summit has just been announced so…

Anyway, finally, Friday we eventually had our staff ‘Old New Year’ party. I let the choice of venue / event / format down to the team (my job is just to pay the bill, after all and it is *their* night). In other countries, staff parties have tended to be of the dinner/dance variety. But my team – a quietly studious lot in the office (yeah, right) - like to party when they let their hair down.

Last year was a raucous affair in a Cuban dive off Taganskaya Ploshchad: with, I gather, the dedicated hard core partying until dawn, fuelled on absinthe, so I hear. Suggestions for this year included taking over a banya (an idea which I quietly, desperately, vetoed). They opted instead…for a karaoke extravaganza.

Oh well.

Actually it was huge fun. They had booked out the slightly Ottoman-looking ‘VIP’ lounge at the Jelsomino Café on Petrovka Ulitsa. Made famous by the fact it was ‘graced’ by Paris Hilton that extraordinary time when she was paid $2 million dollars to visit Moscow for Fashion Week. Completely sound-proofed from the public club, it is way cool and unambiguously ‘lounge-lizard’. When I did venture out public-side, for a toke on a sly fag, there were clearly some wannabe-boybanders out for a vocal warm-up.

It is the classic New Moscow yuppie night out (I am sure there is a better word for such a nomenclature, something more authentikny: does either reader know one?).

The evening featured:

- VIP room draped in silk everywhere
- Bottles of Irish whisky (my team are so cute they know how to get to my good side) – actually only in Moscow do I consider it perfectly normal to order whisky by the bottle; like those Saudis I used to know who holidayed in Lebanon when I was there. Obviously everyone was drinking whisky because there seemed to be three bottles on the bill. Martini Bianco seems to be the ladies’ weapon of choice
- Vast plates of sushi: actually the rice-green fish roe-eel thingy was disconcertingly tasty
- The singing. Oh yes the singing: the guys are all very talented at what they do but, boy! half of them could seemingly be entrants into ‘Russian Idol’ (dance moves included).
- Party games (yay). My guys love ‘em!

I like to think my 01.00 exit was still dignified. I did just once sit back and watch them have a ball and think “gosh, they are wonderful”. Four years ago there were just six of us (none too brilliant the crew I inherited and I out-placed and re-hired PDQ). Now we’re 30-odd. I have been running teams doing what we do for 12 years: and this lot, of all the teams in all the countries… well, when the time comes, I will miss them a lot.

Why Kosovo should not become independent: and how Russia is not helping Serbia’s cause

2008-01-24T22:14:00.000+03:00

Today I was more than mildly amused by this piece in the alerts I receive from http://www.businessneweurope.eu/; the actually rather good news service I subscribe to for central and eastern; south eastern Europe; Russia and central Asia:

Hollywood stars to back Serbia over Kosovo
Bne

Hollywood stars George Clooney and Sharon Stone have voiced support for Serbia's attempt to retain control of the breakaway province Kosovo, according to a report by Serb language German daily Vesti.Clooney said "I will, with my colleague and friend Sharon Stone and her childhood friends, who are of Serb origin, organize a protest soon over the attempt to have Kosovo declare independence," the paper quoted him as saying. The Serbian news agency Tanjug reported on January 21 -- citing unnamed foreign media -- that two other stars, Sean Connery and Richard Gere, have also voiced support for Serbia's case.-18-240108

[Incidentally, the great thing about BNE is the investment banking, banking and corporate newswire service it has. Its political commentary, while colourful, is I find a little more eccentrically hit-and-miss].

It is often pre-supposed that all Westerners support independence for Kosovo. Not true.

This is not because I am slavishly pro-Slav: the pan-Slav political bloc, as a cohesive geopolitical force, has raised its paranoia to an almost psychotically delusional level. The world is not pathologically anti-Slav. Moreover, not supporting an independent Kosovo is not, for a scintilla of a moment, to excuse the appalling behaviour of the Milosevic-era Serbian state in the 1990s. NATO was right to intervene as it did in 1999. Still, it is nice for once to be on the same side as some liberally-minded celebs...

Breaking the world up into ever smaller and smaller micro-states, based on ethnicity, is not a sensible way forward. It only serves to enhance ethnic and religious divide in the world, not establish sustainable cohabitation. Microstates:

- Find it more difficult to protect citizen interests against the behemoths of global super-sized corporate giants
- Generally suffer in global capital and foreign exchange markets
- Find infrastructural investment more difficult and more costly per unit
- Over-spend on central government services as a proportion of GDP and yet, paradoxically, find their ability to fund social and welfare programs more compromised
- Are more vulnerable to global economic shocks
(And these were just the reasons I pondered on the Metro home tonight).

In the giddy heyday of the post-Cold War era, we were all (I think) much taken with the concept of soft power over hard power. As Britain is finding in its relations with Russia today, soft power doesn’t work: it is no power at all. Dividing Europe into ever smaller and smaller pieces – and this applies just as much to ETA-conceived Catalonia; and to other would-be secessionist regions - only serves to weaken the voices of European citizens, not to strengthen it. It goes against the grain of developing a multi-polar world and, frankly, only America stands to benefit.

Russia and China – not only for the obvious reasons of Chechnya and Taipei, respectively – oppose secessionism. But for Russia this is a rather… er… nuance-lite argument based on Slavic nationalism, religiosity and, in short, a ‘grand plan’ spoiling of US and EU/NATO policy in the Balkans (‘Russia getting back into the Balkan game’). It is hardly noble: nor, to date, terribly effective.

A much more reasoned argument for Russia – using both hard power and elusive soft-power – is to demonstrate the constructive benefits of keeping a unified Serbia. Which, BTW, includes the Russian government stepping up to use its now vast wealth for infrastructural and industrial investment in Serbia, including in Kosovo: on an ethnically-blind basis. Allowing Gazprom to buy Serbian energy monopoly, NIS, is not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking structural, long-term macro-economic aid.

It would make a nice change for Russia to be someone else’s deep pocket of last resort; rather than relying on the EU/EBRD. Ultimately, Serbian policy, over the long-run, will follow the money. Selling off energy assets aside, Russia shouldn’t be too surprised if a weakened Serbia has no option but to follow an EU/NATO track (because enlargement-era history shows you can’t join the former unless you’ve joined the latter).

There is a good case to make for keeping Serbian intact: but Russia isn’t making it.

Old warriors rattle nuclear sabre

2008-01-22T21:34:00.000+03:00

Well it didn’t take long for the West to match the Russians in their willingness to use nukes preventatively did it?

Russian war-planners will go ah-hah! Especially given that one of the authors is this manifesto is of Georgian heritage. But this isn’t about Russia. It’s about Iran; where the key facility may be too big and too deep underground to be taken out by conventional bunker-busters.

Mapping the 2007 State Duma elections: turnout analysis

2008-01-21T20:47:00.000+03:00

A friend and colleague showed me the above chart which has been bouncing round the Russian blogosphere this weekend. It shows, along the bottom, percentage voter turnouts, against the number of constituencies.

Your eye might first be caught by the far right of the chart: the number of constituencies reporting over 90% turnout. Well, my colleague points out, that this is not so unusual actually. In some parts of Russia there would have been near ubiquitous turn-out: far-flung military bases being a good example (which form tiny constituencies all of their own).

No, the interesting thing to note – and this data comes from the Central Election Commission’s own stats – are those little peaks: around 60%, 70%, 80% etc. in most non-compulsory election systems you would expect a normal distribution (or bell) curve; peaking around the 50-60% mark. The peaks around some fairly…um … ‘headline’ numbers are interesting.

There have been some snarky comments about this in the Russian blogosphere. I won’t comment: not least as I am reminded that, in Russia, it is a criminal offense for foreigners to criticize the government, state, church or cultural institutions. Said colleague may have been tempted to post about this on our corporate blog, which sadly I would have to veto: that would be the wrong sort of political development for our corporate blog to discuss. Either reader, though, looking at the chart, may care to draw their own conclusions.

Gathering mushroom clouds...

2008-01-20T17:45:00.000+03:00

It is not exactly heart-warming when the head of the Russian army goes on State TV and tells the Russian population: "... to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons..."

This will, in tomorrow's Western media, cause quite the storm; especially in the UK where everyone is now rabidly Russophobic. The excellent blog Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces suggests that this is because Russia is feeling more isolated and vulnerable.

[The picture above, BTW, is a Topol M ICBM, or RT-2UTTH. NATO IDENT: SS-27]

Russia feeling insecure is becoming a rich theme at present. Rupert Wingfield Hayes, one of the BBC's better correspondents in Moscow, broadcast about 'Russia's inferiority complex' just before Christmas. Personally, I struggle to understand why Russia should feel inferior - its got Europe by the gas-guzzling balls; is likely to be one of the few economies to experience GDP growth in 2008 - although perhaps less than the government reckons it will achieve - and has wrested political stability from the edge of fracture and chaos. But perhaps the key is that - in Presidential election year - it is thought that the people need to be reminded they have enemies all around them and would be under threat if not for the might of the state. Of course there is no real truth or necessity to this statement: but it is good domestic realpolitik. Especially if Ukraine pours fuel on the fire of Russo-Occidental relations by pushing NATO membership.

Personally, I think NATO membership for Ukraine is bad for both Ukraine and NATO, let along Russia. RIA Novosti published an interesting comment piece on this last week, which I think gets it about right.

Speaking of Ukraine, the excellent English-language blog on Ukrainian politics, Foreign Notes (which is worth reading, despite the very crappy template it uses) has just flagged the latest paper from the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom which has published Russia and the West: a reassessment. You can download it. It will be my bedtime reading tonight, but I think it starts spot-on:

"A powerful Russia... is a fact of life... They are no longer seeking [the West's] approval... The post-Cold War partnership, founded at a time of Russian disorientation and weakness, is history.

"...Although Russia is not a global threat, it seeks to be both enabler and spoiler. It will exploit our difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan and leverage its influence in Iran to diminish Western influence in the former USSR, where it will use both hard and soft power to resurrect its dominance." [my emphasis]

Recently, there has been some colourful talk in Moscow about the 'resurrection of the USSR by 2010' (I gather radio Ekho Mosckviy ran a talk-show on this) and I have even found a delightfully barking blog dedicated to this idea. I am not sure I buy the remake of the USSR, but I suppose a lot of Cold Warriors will be feeling nostalgic today.

I think it was my mate, Talleyrand, who first said: "Russia is never as strong as she looks; Russia is never as weak as she looks". Which not so long ago, President Putin amended this to comment: "Russia was never so strong as it wants to be and never so weak as it is thought to be."

Too true. Nukes are of course central to Russian defence if, for a moment, you consider how the military top brass struggles with a largely conscript army of uncertain efficacy where, apparently, it is proving harder and harder to boost the number of contract soldiers.

[The map above is from the Natural Resource Defence Council, those cuddly US-greenies. It is what they call their 'US playbook for nuclear attack'. The blue dots are de-commissioned missiles silos, the NRDC claims to have tracked from de-classified US military sources concerning nuclear attack targets. The red dots, they say, are the sites of 360 operational nuclear silos the US has pre-programed as targets, according to declassified sources. But as I recall, most of the Russian nuclear missile capability is road-mobile or submarine based: precisely because the USA has so many of the land silos identified.]

Time to remember where you put all your suitcases?

2008-01-17T23:03:00.000+03:00

I think the commentators at (snazzy new look) Siberian Light have got it about right when they say that, however London tries to spin it, the closure of the British Council offices in St Pete’s and Yekaterinburg is a slam-dunk victory for the Russian government.

From the very first it was clear that, closure having been ordered, there were never going to be any circumstances under which the British Council would be allowed to keep these outfits open, in bald defiance of the Russian government’s orders.

Seen from the perspective of us Brits living in Moscow, this looks like a classic UK New Labour spin doctor’s game: adopt a position certain to provoke a Russian reaction and then pretend to ‘take the moral high-ground’ and spin out how – while not conceding Moscow’s point – London has shut down the two complained of offices (as initially instructed) ‘in the interests of staff safety’. It is exactly how I would have played it. As chess moves go, there have been no missteps here, by either side. This game has played out in a way that each side can exploit to the full.

It is clear though that Official Russia – and the tabloid storm it whips up – would gladly like now to see some Brits in the private sector expelled, thus to enforce the idea that Britain has sent enemies into Russia, far and wide across the country. I think that will be next.

This is purely a personal observation, for which I have no empirical evidence, but it seems to me there is more than the Litvinenko thing going on here. I suspect the Russian government has good reason to suspect a substantial upsurge in UK SIS activity in Russia.

That said, and less melodramatically, even the British Council’s best friends would say that some of their cultural programs were sailing very close to the wind. I was slack-jawed, at a private lunch with BC managers last year, as they described their support for Chechen activists…sorry… theatre groups. To be fair, one BC manager privately conceded to me that they needed to tone down the politics of some of the arts programs they were supporting. It seems they didn’t do so soon enough.

My sense of unease today was not helped when one staffer, with FSB mates, warned me: “I’ve been told that all British citizens resident in Russia are being reviewed by the FSB”. Needless to say, as someone who – as it says at the top of this blog – is ‘An Englishman in Moscow, whose life is a slalom between the attitudes, aspirations and realities of modern Russia and the prejudices and politics of the West’ – one feels the tiniest bit exposed…

Three random facts of life in Moscow

2008-01-15T23:32:00.000+03:00

Visa hell. And although my bosses say ‘steer clear of all admin, refer it all to HQ’, I am sucked into it…

Not mine. New hires and the other expats. My Chief of Staff is complaining at the document load – and the cost – for six expats. The problem is magnified because we are changing from one legal entity to another – in the West this would be a quick paper-trail exercise: in Russia of course it means cancelling existing permits and visas and starting all over again. To compensate I have vetoed a Russian hire I would otherwise have done this side of summer. I am nothing if not budget-management boy…

We estimate it’ll cost about Euros 3,000+ in legal fees each for work permit renewal / initial grant; and about 3 person-days of admin for each one. The most painful, interestingly, is for a Lithuanian (but one well worth the hassle); and for a US hire who already has a work permit, but I have poached from a local competitor. So, again, the process starts from scratch. Oh, if only Russia had Green Cards…

In the light of HM’s Ambassador’s latest ‘up yours’ to Russia, one colleague – a dual-nat – I have told to switch her work permit / visa application from her UK to her Irish passport. And resolve not to hire more Brits. Apropos of which I curse myself for rejecting the chance I myself had to be a dual-nat: then to avoid the other country's national service. Ironically, I now think I would have been a much better person to have been in the services and wish I had done so. Strange huh?

Russo-UK relations are only going to get worse not better, so prudent risk management means reducing exposure to UK nationality staff where we can. Once again, I ponder that I could do my job just as well based in lovely Kyiv: it is time to give that move much more serious thought…

In passing, I no longer understand what the UK government is playing at with its approach to Russia – apparently ‘diplomacy’ is no longer a New Labour requisite for the FCO.

Having been fair summoned to my mother’s sixtieth birthday* party at the beginning of February, I have been searching for a cheap way home (ideally in and out the UK in three days). Nah…

[* I was an…er…unexpected present at university]

Searching for even economy fares to fly to the airport in the North – where our English house is – airlines want absurd amounts to do a Moscow-[via]-[Northern England]-[via]-Moscow flight (Air France wanted $3,000 – in economy????). And then the scheduling proved impossible. OK, I thought, fly to London and take the train for the weekend trip… um…no. UK rail does ‘engineering’ on Sundays so the usual 2 ½ trip would take…five hours. If only RZhD ran Britain’s railways…

It would have been a third of the total cost – and much better weather – if the party had been held at our French place. North Yorkshire? In February? Go figure.

So locking into a ludicrous schedule – into London Thursday night from Moscow; train ‘oop North’ Friday morning (in time for the sacred party, at which all my mother’s Slow friends will attend, but let’s not use the word gruesome); train to London Sunday, fly home Monday. Three days’ leave.

It will be interesting, though, to see which of my half-Step siblings turn up…

Tonight I was surfing the schedules of the Moscow opera and ballet companies I like. Q1 looks like the most tedious schedule I have ever witnessed. I trawl just four things to go to between now and the end of March. Four? In 2 ½ months?

It is not helped by the fact that I have now, it seems, seen everything – I mean *everything* - currently in repertoire at the Bolshoi. So I go for ‘favs’ amongst current productions: Tosca; Nabucco; In the Upper Room and Chaika. I am embarrassed to count how many times I have now seen the last two in Moscow. But – lame as this may sound – if I don’t see opera or ballet fairly regularly I honestly feel my soul starting to wither…

Good news, bad news...

2008-01-10T14:14:00.000+03:00

Pleased to read in the Moscow Times today that Nashi (Russia site here) was for once on the opposite side to the authorities yesterday. Their picketing of the EU ‘Embassy’ (sic) in Moscow, now and then, is almost as irritating as when they harass HM’s Ambassador.

That said, the authorities normally cut Nashi a lot of slack; which makes me wonder when I read that dozens of them were detained for an illegal demonstration. Now that the State Duma elections are over – and any neo-Orange threats apparently safely put to bed, now is the time the Kremlin can focus on a calm transition between Presidencies. In other words, Nashi has kind of served its purpose for now.

A post-Soviet Komsomol was always going to have its attractions for the nostalgic. But, boy-scouts aside, Nashi as political shock-troops? I just wonder if there isn’t a sense that they need to be on a shorter leash. One can but hope…

…but then I saw this on the BBC so, perhaps then, reasonableness is not about to break out all around.

Admittedly the Americans and their bloody shield started it, but – groans – this is not a hugely helpful development.

Dmitry Rogozin is a ‘pick a fight’ politician and not someone inclined to improve Russo-NATO relations. He makes John Bolton look like Talleyrand.

Russian arms exports

2008-01-10T11:54:00.000+03:00

This magnificent beast below is the Su-34 fighter-bomber (NATO Ident: “Fullback”). Aficionados of big, hairy weapons systems (and I am not one) say that it creams the F-16 in performance terms.

According to Kommersant today, Australia is thinking of buying them too. Obviously Australia isn’t a part of NATO – small issue of geography there – but they have snuggled up close to it.

Which begs the question about interoperability: the slightly spooky RAND Corporation has written well on this issue.

But can you imagine the hullabaloo amongst the US right / military if the Aussies buy Ruskie? That would be fun to watch…

Is Kazakhstani banking going to hell in a handcart?

2007-12-19T17:51:00.000+03:00

I meant to blog about this as it crossed over the wires and dealing screens Monday:

Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev said international rating agencies were biased against Kazakh banks

"Considering that Kazakhstan as a state provides substantial support to domestic banks, construction companies and small and medium business and also that the Kazakh economy is stable and on a firm footing, it's subjective to downgrade ratings," Nazarbayev told journalists in Pavlodar."I think that rating agencies have to consider that Kazakhstan is on a stable footing and will not allow any of its banks to go under," he said."I had already said that if such a situation continued, we would buy out shares of our companies themselves," he said, as cited by Interfax.

The global credit crunch, aside from effectively flooring Northern Rock has wreaked havoc in the Kazakhstani banking system. The Central Bank has pumped in liquidity and this has stabilized what otherwise threatened to be a run on a number of banks.

The picture is much prettier if you also caught how ATF Bank – being sold to Unicredit – had blatantly tried to screw its minority preference shareholders, to funnel all the money into the pockets of a few, very well-connected hangers-on from the Nazarbayev clan. You have to admire plucky little hedge fund, QVT, for sticking to its guns and demanding that ATF and Unicredit play fair: good luck to them! Unicredit seems to attract controversy when it buys these rinky-dink banks. In truth I wonder whether the real lesson we all should be learning here is that - contrary to abundant western-market opinion - Kakakhstan is actually as hopelessly inadequate, for real commercial rule of law, as the other 'stans.

Most of the domestic banking system is controlled either by the First Family, or by their mates, and, boy, have they screwed it up or what?

Today I read that Fitch ratings has followed where S&P have already trodden and have altered their Outlook across most of the KAZ banking sector from “Stable” to “Negative”. Most of these banks now have an S&P rating equivalent of BB-, which means not really good enough credit quality for their banks’ bonds to be bought by mainstream global investment institutions (but only specialist, high-risk funds).

What I think is interesting about the Nazarbayev quote is that, in effect, he says that the Government will guarantee the banking system. Now leaving aside issues about ‘moral hazard’, I have to say that maybe the ratings agencies have got it wrong. If oil-rich Kazakhstan will, as the President says, step in and rescue any bank, then surely the banks’ ratings should rise.

Conversely, it is the sovereign rating for Kazakhstan itself (already recently lowered by S&P to BBB-) which should be lowered again; because de facto Nazarbayev has just added all those banks’ debts to his national balance sheet.

Not, BTW, the brightest move in terms of sound financial economic management; but I suppose if you treat the banking system as being a personal plaything, like you treat the state as a whole…

Bolshoi round-up: weekend 14th- 16th December

2007-12-17T01:28:00.000+03:00

These are the last of the Bolshoi performances I will see before coming back to Moscow after an extended Christmas / New Year break in Italy.

Ballet: Three one act ballets (14th December)

What unites these three one act ballets? I am not sure I have quite put my finger on it:

- Chopiniana – very elegant, if slightly stayed and ancient piece choreographed by Mikhail Fokine in 1908
- The Lesson – about which I have written before here – but startlingly different from the last time I saw it
- Carmen Suite – Triumphant one act piece set to, and abbreviating, Bizet’s masterpiece.

It might have been ‘love’ (eugh): unreal love; perverted love; love betrayed.

With one or two ‘break out’ exceptions, however, this was a rather bland, somewhat derivative, night from the world’s greatest ballet company.

Chopiniana is one of those pieces that, if you are bringing a visitor to Moscow who really doesn’t often *do* ballet, but wants to experience the Bolshoi, is perfect. It is beautiful, if a bit gratingly chocolate box-y. Selected quotes from the program essay follow:

“The distant past and the remote future are here united in an uneasy creative vision…neither the 19th nor the 20th centuries… [The 1900s were the] years of grace, the years of a happy interval in Russian art. These were the years when all bans and taboos – moral, ideological and other – which had hampered the development of the arts [in Russia], were relaxed…

“…as an artist [choreographer, Mikhail] Fokine belongs to the interval between two [Russian] epochs, the ‘technical’ 19th and bloody 20th centuries…”

Yep, that pretty much sums it up: a museum-piece (albeit a charming one), nice for tourists and ‘important’ to have seen; a box ticked. But Alexander Titov conducted the Bolshoi’s mélange of 8 Chopin pieces here rather well. Albeit that Chopin is not a composer I am able to get very excited about (sorry!).

The Lesson was much more interesting – conductor, Igor Dronov brought the Bolshoi orchestra to a new level – not least because I was expecting a disappointment. In the Bolshoi’s repertoire, sadly inevitably aging, enfant terrible, Sergei Filin *is* the maestro of this piece and usually no one else but him can really put it off.

Previously I have written that, danced by him, this piece was ‘Hitchcockian…darkly funny”. His relatively last minute replacement was Dmitriy Gudanov, and he danced and performed the role completely differently. There was nothing comic about it. It was psychologically brutal – we were witnessing child murder on stage – and almost harrowing to watch. More like snuff ballet. Above all, it reveals quite a lot about the unbreakable cycle and banal inevitability of human evil…

…and you thought ballet was just about pretty prancing!

While fans of Sergey Filin will say that piece forever belongs to him, the deeply tormented – and tormenting – performance of Gudanov is I think remarkable and very close to the origins of the libretto; based on the play by Eugene Ionesco. I quote from the program’s interview with controversial, veteran choreographer, the Dane, Flemming Flindt:

“This is serious dramatic material and there is no way its action can be beautiful.

“…the dramatic text has a socio-political colouring and implication. The dramatist [Ionesco] told me the action unfolds during the Second World War in Nazi-occupied Paris. The chief character [the ballet teacher] is a dictator-maniac, his assistant [the accompanist] the German people, while the little girls [pupils] who turn up, one after the other, are the victims of the occupiers, they are strangled by the maniac, who deprives them of life.” [The principal victim wears a startling yellow costume, so the link to the Holocaust is hard to miss]

Gudanov’s performance is faithful to this and I am not sure that, compared to Filin’s undoubtedly admirable rendition, isn’t the better for it. Seen in its raw literality it is quite hard to stomach; but absolutely riveting.

BTW: the audience rightly celebrated, above all, Irina Zibrova’s formidable and complex portrayal of the accompanist. Aristotelian in her tragedy, it was therefore tinged with our sympathy and thus a small, quiet triumph of a performance. Again, quite unlike Ilze Liempa (who normally partners this with Filin).

Neither partnership is necessarily ‘better’ than the other. They are incomparable which, in itself, is interesting.

The final one-act piece presented was Carmen Suite. This is good fun stuff and a well-chosen finale to an otherwise uneven evening. Ruslan Skvortsov, as José, was very good (and more exciting a dancer than other times I have seen him); but the star turn, as it should be, was Galina Stepanenko, in the title role.

Opera: The Tsar’s Bride (16th December)

Wow! What a performance. As a composer, Rimsky-Korsakov is hugely under-rated in the West and part of the reason may be that his operas are not ‘easy’ (it is amazing to think he has 15 to his name and the rarity with which the majority are now performed, a little sad). They are rich, musically dense and – while requiring some concentration – are as emotionally epic as the history they often depict.

Loosely based on a vignette of the life of Ivan the Terrible – and the tragic fate of one of his wives (a pretty long list that; Ivan the Terrible was as much a wife-killer as Henry VIIIth, without the latter’s boyish charm) - it is one of the three great quintessentially-Russian operas (IMHO). The other two in the canon, I would humbly suggest, are Eugene Onegin (not quite my cup of tea, Tchaikovsky opera) and Modest Musorgsky’s Boris Gudunov (which I love).

As is often the case in Russian opera, Act one was a bit of a trial (and a four-act opera, on a Sunday night, does require some effort on the part of the audience), but eventually the performance was a triumph. Some foreign visitors – who had perhaps booked ‘a night at the Bolshoi’ irrespective of what was on – clearly decided they found it all a bit much. Audience-wise, there was quite a disappointing attrition, from the ‘posh seats’ by the end of the evening. This is an opera-lover’s opera.

Highlights (from the scribbles I made in my program):

- Irina Dolzhenko as the tragic Lyubasha – her forlorn arias in Act I (all the more impressive for being a capella) and Act II were incredible and unforgettable.
- Mariya Gavrilova as Marfa – the heroine and female lead – while perhaps a tad too old for this part, her arias in Act II and Act IV were show-stopping
- Leonid Vilensky as the wicked Bomelius (performed con brio and with some charm, as good opera villains should be)
- Act III is one of the most rousing moments in Russian opera you will witness
- Act IV – is that set borrowed from the current production of Boris Gudunov? – stood up well to its show-stealing predecessor; and belonged to Gavrilova.
- Alexander Titov – again conducting – shows he is still master of the Bolshoi’s traditional canon of work.
- Irina Rubtsova – one of my favourite Bolshoi principal soloists, I was disappointed she ‘only’ had the cameo role of Saburova. But her Act III solo was just *wow*.
- Vladimir Redkin, as Gryaznoy, gave a very strong performance in the male lead – especially in Act IV. He also gets a costume change for each act and thus enjoys perhaps some of the most sumptuous costumes male leads at the Bolshoi ever get to wear…even if a little like my (sadly long dead) nanny’s choice in curtain material.

No more Bolshoi now for me until my return to Moscow in mid-January (although I see the finalized repertoire for January is looking tired, as that artistically ‘dead’ month in January, in Moscow at least, often is). Worth seeing again though, I think, the current production of Tosca.

Highlights and lowlights – a week past

2007-12-15T03:50:00.000+03:00

Very good moments:

Dinner with a chum I haven’t seen in six years, La Cigale du Recamier, Paris.

I love the food here and, although I am only in Paris about ten nights a year, I feel slightly boring that I insist I dine here for half of them; but this place *is* Paris dining for me. Although I have no writing talent, when I ‘cash out’, I plan to de-funge here and toil at my lite-weight, auto-bio. It is very post-modern, literary… but also comfy and I love the food and the wine list…

Guest: “have you seen la Comtesse [most gorgeously grand, and improbably good, if wildly eccentric, friend] she always asks about you…you used to vacation together… she used to say you would have made a lovely art historian…you know she sold the Rome apartment…to a Fendi sister…you used to go there together a lot, no?”

Me: “…She never got over the shock of Michael Portillo’s ‘coming out’; but her cousin in the Vatican is a friend of one of mine there… yes she did… we did…the downstairs is now the main shop in Rome [of a fashion brand]… we email occasionally – she hates email and says proper letters ‘maketh civilization’ and email cheapens us all – but we are having lunch New Year’s, in Rome, at her new place…”

Guest: “Why do you persist in living in Moscow? Come live in Paris. It would be much better for you… [we both do vaguely the same sort of work…I think mine is more interesting; he thinks it ‘no doubt envelope-pushing, but not quite the thing one should anchor oneself to]”

I think he used the phrase ‘envelope-pushing’ on purpose and not in a totally wholesome way. It is not true, BTW. About ‘envelopes’ and stuff… don't believe everything you read about Russia…

…Dinner started at 9.30 (ended before the Witching Hour though, because I had an 08.00 meeting). It began with vast apologies to Guest and maitre d’ both, as I was 45 minutes late ([in French, from the back of the hotel car]:

“Please send a bottle of Veuve to our table and ask him to order… the driver says I am ETA 20 minutes…so please take his order, and hopefully I’ll in arrive in time. I’ll have the fois gras and the soufflé with mustard sauce – you still do that yes? [they did] And your recommended Gigondas please; but please decant it*…sorry again!)

* our French place is hard by Gigondas, so I know what will be guaranteed He’ll like, so asking for it to be decanted is not pretension, just being practical (wine snobs are bores but inverse-wine snobs are immensely the more dreary, so get over yourselves).

We hadn’t had dinner, or anything other than a quick coffee at Heathrow, for six years. Now married, bred x two…committed to living in France…utterly happy. I envy him. He has matured: in comparison to him I see I haven’t matured. I am still a spoilt little boy. The curse of being an only child.

Guest: “So… have you exorcised all your Caribbean ghosts? We never thought that world was quite you. You should you come back to civilized Europe and all we [he really said this] stand for”

Me: “Actually, Moscow *is * civilized Europe, but I know what you mean… Haiti? Guadeloupe? Forgotten completely… Utterly forgotten.

“But I am not done with Moscow quite yet. I have something and someone there important to me. Things to do…goals… [etc]”.

--------

Highlights:

Meeting some lovely friends at Bar des Amis on Wednesday night in London - I was briefly passing through the UK for a few hours – everyone’s children are growing up so fast. One friend – admittedly after second bottle of Nuit Saint Georges – I told ‘you and [wife] *must* come visit me in Moscow, I’ll be the perfect host and we’ll scoot up to St Pete’s and stay at my favorite hotel in Russia’.

Lowlights:

To be chanted, to a piano piece by Philip Glass:

“I hate BAE 146s
I hate BAE 146s
I hate BAE 146s
I hate BAE 146s
BAE 146s hate them,
yes I most certainly do”

For inspiration, herewith a piano piece composed by Philip Glass… swoons…

Anyway, BAE 146s! Scariest freakin’ engines noises on the air-borne planet. And I really don’t like ‘yanking and banking’ that low over Southern London – all too reminiscent of:

When you are *that low* over London city tower blocks…it is horrid… did I say the Orly – London City airport by Air France was useful? Poke out my eyes! The noise the tiny-weeny engines make as they rev down for descent. Loathsome.

Mid-light:

In London, at my usual (really I suppose pretty regular) hotel, they don’t charge me for any of my bar bill, “you’re family sir, welcome back…is it cold in Moscow?...”

Oh. But the meetings all this travel was for? Apparently my bosses think I did good. The meetings were easy Compared to all the flying: I am going to have to go back on the tranquilizers when I fly this much again…

A la recherche du temps perdu

2007-12-13T04:37:00.000+03:00

Ever since I lived in the DOM and, indeed, rather surprisingly did a thing for a while (on loan from someone, seconded to someone else) in Haiti, I have always had a soft spot for Air France.

In 2002, I crossed the Atlantic 19 times with them. Epically comfortable, at the front of the plane, it was like a monthly+, Michelin-starred lunch-date at 40,000 feet.

There used to be an Air France flight that left Miami – jolly early, 06.55? – and went, like a bus, down les Antilles; first to Port au Prince, in Haiti, before Guadeloupe, Martinique and Cayenne. I wonder if it still does? Miami I used to go to – for R&R – about every 4-6 weeks.

On landing in Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture ‘International’ Airport, for post-9/11 security reasons, everyone had to de-plane, and I will never forget the strutting, sexy (I was younger, thinner), *assuredness* as I ‘turned left’ – entering Haiti – as discount tourists all gawped at me, as they turned right (in transit to a holiday Isle).

True, they and I knew Haiti was relentless and unforgiving chaos. But they were going on, to calmer islands further south, to drink lame cocktails at some sub-Sandals hotel (those most Weybridge of resorts). While I, on the other hand, was doing stuff, meeting my gun-packing, chauffeured Hummer waiting outside the airport. These were literally the best days of my life: I never earned so little, or lived so much.

Today I was passing through Paris Orly Ouest to fly Paris-London City (for a grand total of 16 hours: I fly to Kyiv tomorrow).

Bizarrely, this itty-bitty – but jolly useful – flight uses the same gate-suite as the Air France flights to Cayenne, Fort de France and, the airport for the island that was my base for 2 ½ years, Pointe à Pitre en Guadeloupe.

I have used these gates several times since my Caribbean posting – Air France uses them to fly to Morocco, which I have done several times since living in the FWI – but this afternoon, as I was flying to London (for a 16 hour trip mostly spent at in an investment bank), they were boarding the main daily flight to Guadeloupe.

And I was engulfed in a wave of warm, humid and slightly noxious *nostalgie*.

My colleagues with me, laughed. My English became more obviously Frenchified – i.e. in an accent that, for Francophone English speakers, was more easily understandable. I was engulfed.

Stealing a moment away from my colleagues (including my boss) I called my mother. I set the scene. “You miss it, darling. Of course you do. I miss the winter sun there, but I do not miss, darling – and every day I am grateful – that you decided to come back. I don’t think you were ever cut out for [that life]...”.

Gwada-French has a distinctive accent, the one, now, with which I speak French (as Parisians never fail to remind me) and, hearing it all around me at Orly airport today, was almost unbearable.

I have now the most interesting life I have ever had – the work I do in Moscow is some of the most intellectually and professionally…blah, blah… but when reminded of what I had, and who I shared it with, in Haiti and Guadeloupe… sighs. In Paris today I met worked with someone with whom, wonderfully, I collaborated 10 years ago. They have aged better...

So now I know why Proust was such a preternaturally miserable git. Temps definitely perdue

Modern life...

2007-12-11T09:49:00.000+03:00

My life-planning seems to have crunched a gear. Having spent all weekend working in the office (albeit enlivened by a great evening at the Bolshoi Sunday), the rest of the week is now looking pretty horrendous.

I am about to leave for the airport to Paris (two meetings on arrival, from about 6pm local time, interviewing people for jobs here in Moscow as it happens). Then, on Wednesday, an early morning, lengthy and important meeting before flying from Orly – a much easier airport than CdG – to London City airport, for a crucial (and likely to be very lengthy) meeting there.

My working day will begin about 08.00 Paris and end about 20.00 London (or 23.00, my body will think, as I will be running on Moscow time). NB: yes, I would have preferred to Eurostar – anything to avoid flying – but central Paris, to the City of London, is definitely quicker (in the middle of the day when Eurostar-ers clearly like a long lunch) to fly Air France to City airport. That’s City airport: go to Heathrow and your scheduling will be screwed (and you might have well as crossed the channel by steam ship).

Thursday and I am on the 08.00 BA flight to Kyiv; hopefully landing in time to go give a speech at a conference (I would have cut this, but apparently we’re sponsoring and I can’t get out of it). After the sponsors’ reception, I will head straight to Kyiv station for the overnight train to Moscow. With a fair wind we will have cleared first the Ukrainian and then the Russian border posts by about 01.00 Moscow time and then I can then sleep before the 05.30 wake up and arrival into Moscow shortly thereafter, early on Friday morning. And a full day of meetings.

When I started in my career, and decided I wanted it to be as international as could be, business trips tended to be ‘fly out the night before, dinner (sampling local culture), meeting, local networking lunch, afternoon flight home’. Now it’s five countries in four days and subsisting on airport food. Moreover, in the days before email – I am that old – business trips were rather decorous uninterrupted, thought-provoking affairs. These days, one has still to carve out 6-8 hours a day processing email traffic. It is what you do now, in airport lounges, on planes and, yes, even in the backs of taxis and before grabbing a few hours’ sleep. This is progress apparently.

Medvedev’s posse or Team Putin: which is real?

2007-12-10T18:57:00.000+03:00

Commenting on a recent post of mine, Archie asks why I am besotted with the Team Putin concept. Why not the idea of ‘new President, new power elite’? Well today, on the news that 1st Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev (Chairman, also, of Gazprom) is to be Anointed by His Hand, and succeed to the Federal Presidency, it seems a good moment to suggest an answer to that question.

‘Team Putin’ I think explains why VVP is giving up the Presidency, and wanted United Russia so badly to have such a big majority in the new Duma (with him as its Godfather); and someone who has always been pretty obedient - Presidential-nominee Dmitri Medvedev, for instance - as successor President. It is worth recalling that in 2005 Medvedev was trying to force the merger of his Gazprom with Sergei Bogdanchikov's Rosneft. He didn’t get his way and quite meekly accepted Sechin / Bogdanchikov’s thwarting Gazprom’s ‘mega-oil’ ambitions so that Rosneft, and not Gazprom, feasted on the lucrative carrion that was Yukos.

I think it may be time now to go back to that old idea of Gazprom merging with Rosneft - creating the world's most powerful energy company - with VVP as its Chairman. Put Rosneft and Gazprom together and you create a Mega-Oil & gas firm whose reserves are so vast, the mere Big Oil firms (ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, Total) look puny in comparison. So vast that you’d league table Gazprom-Rosneft like a country…like Saudi Arabia... A business truly worthy of VVP's retirement.

Ironically this will have achieved, through Gazprom and with VVP at its head, *exactly* what Mikhail Khodorkovsky was trying to do, with Yukos wealth. Except this time it will be the nationalization of democracy, consistent with what I mentioned here, rather than the privatization of the constitution as an oligarchs’ plaything.

This would explain recent Rosneft machinations very easily. Not, though, Bogdanchikov being pushed out (as CEO) and Igor Sechin in, as I wrote last week. But Bogdanchikov - whom you will recall personally, fiercely opposed the original deal to merge with Gazprom - sacrificed to allow Sechin in – not as a real CEO – but just to ensure a giant merger deal with Gazprom passes through; a last act on behalf of the boss he has so loyally served, VVP.

Needless to say, these are both publicly traded companies - well, yes I concede the market's reaction will be interesting - but damn if that wouldn't make Rosneft stock look a steal right now...

Moscow ballet: round-up from the last month

2007-12-10T02:16:00.000+03:00

Sunday night I was lucky enough to see Nadezhda Gracheva dance the title role in Giselle: as it turned out very lucky indeed. Giselle is one of the things for which the Bolshoi is most famous. Nadezhda Gracheva is my age (she is 38!!) and she is a goddess. Technical perfection and so emotionally acute, as to twist and yet simultaneously make your heart soar. She made me cry twice. And I don’t give a shit if anyone reading this thinks that makes me a mincing girl-boy. Needless to say, there are just a handful of nights at the Bolshoi in Moscow, the city that raises ballet to the apogee of human artistic achievement like no other, which you never want to miss. Tonight was one of those nights. I stayed for all five encores.

In the face of such genius, don’t overlook equally veteran principal soloist Andrey Uvarov: at that age [Gracheva’s partner obviously can’t be too young] to leap so high; to be so strong and so elegant is literally heroic.

Hats off, also, to Vyacheslav Lopatin: so often a ‘character actor’ in the Bolshoi cast, tonight I think he was like a new man – in the ‘peasant pas de deux’ – and the ‘home crowd’ (us regulars) knew it and we made the rafters of the Bolshoi New Stage rock, in our congratulations to him!

If only for the Bolshoi Facebook group, I wanted to trot through some other opera and ballet highlights recently. And celebrate one of the real privileges of living in Moscow: the world-beating liberal, musical arts on daily offer here.

I mentioned here that I had seen the Bolshoi’s newish Le Corsaire (about which arts Moscow was very excited, but the night I saw it I was exhausted and consequently under-whelmed, I must see it again) and the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko’s Carmen, which was a total triumph.

I had been planning, with fidelity, to review the things I have seen in Moscow opera and ballet, but – boring of me I know –my job has been sucking the life out of me recently …er….I have been busy, and I have struggled to blog regularly.

At huge expense, I had front-row seats for ‘Kings of the Dance’ at the Bolshoi on 28th October. At its best, ballet is an ensemble experience so - as recorded by critics in the USA – I was initially uncomfortable with the idea of four male soloists showing off for the evening.

It is my practice to scribble notes on the program – my opera glasses have a discreet night-light – of performances I see. The ones I scribbled of act one were…um…quite vituperative.

Kings of the Dance is an American construction clearly devised for the YouTube generation and for audiences who like regular doses of television to lighten otherwise ‘difficult’ evenings of pure performance. It starts with a ‘home video’, on a huge screen, of the four performers. It is twenty minutes long. Forgive me but (a) I do not go to the ballet/opera and wish I had been to the cinema and (b) it has to be said that just as actors are often foolish talking about ‘their art’ (and are better viewed actually acting), nothing is so certain as to turn one off ballet than to sit and watch a movie of dancers say how inspired they are and how wonderful it all is. Terribly insipid and, alas, vapid. And outrageous. After a twenty minute video, there were only 18 minutes of live dance before the interval – remember some people had paid $300 for their tickets. Audience-reaction-wise the performers were in no doubt ‘it was not going well’.

The Russian (home-grown) of these ‘Four Tenors’ of dance was Nikolai Tsiskaridze, and either reader of this blog might recall I am not a fan of his campy prancing. I wish he had retired two years ago.

But tonight – and I have never seen this happen at the Bolshoi – he stumbled and fell. Muscovites love Tsiskaridze and the groan of despair was huge and heartfelt. I have no wish to rub his nose in it and can therefore happily say that the way he picked himself up and, at the end, defied anyone to give him less than a standing ovation, as he strutted off the stage – like a Roman Emperor - was, in truth, an extraordinary, memorable moment. The guy is a star, even if I am not a fan, it must be admitted. And stars have balls and enormous self-belief. So I owe him my salute, if only for that one moment.

This being Moscow, this US show had to have a greater than usual Russian content – because, naturally, one cannot have Moscow audiences believe that Russia is anything other than the Alpha and Omega of ballet. And I thank the producers for it. We were treated to the always cheeky Sergey Filin and the moody-but-brilliant, Ilze Liepa, perform ‘the Lesson”. Hitchcockian menace combined with genuine comedy, this piece (choreographed by Flemming Flindt, music by Georges Delerue) is just genius. And terribly funny, in a dark sort of way.

The four Kings danced together in a Christopher Wheeldon piece, ‘For Four’. Hmm…Americans and Brits think he is the Damien Hurst of ballet. I must have lost the plot because actually I think his work artistically suburban, in a wannabe-GQ way.

In the US première of this confection, the star turn had been Ethan Stiefel dancing Fosse’s ‘Percussion IV’. Evidently, Russians and Brits are culturally united because we both thought this 90210 of dance rather silly (but in the US, rather over-excited ballet critics call him ‘Apollo’). Yes he is pretty, but real ballet-lovers really aren’t interested in that sort of thing; no matter what tabloid caricature might have you believe.

One stand-out moment of amazing brilliance though: Johan Kobborg – from Denmark (and I keep reminding myself I must go to Copenhagen to see the Royal Ballet there) – did an amazing piece, The Faun (choreographed by Tim Rushton, music by Debussy). In my scribbled program notes it says: “…best solo ever seen…mesmerizing…technically brilliant…raunch” (LOL).

Spain’s Angel Corella was also featured. But I struggle to understand why.

As part of its ‘Dance Inversion’ ballet festival, the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko hosted the Portuguese National Ballet’s ‘Pedro & Ines’ (I saw the 18th November performance). This famous – if you are Portuguese – medieval tale is part Romeo and Juliet and part Eloise & Abelard.

This was quite unlike anything we ever see in Moscow. It was a small, dark jewel of a work: like a nineteenth century necklace made of jet. Both darkly glamorous and also deeply mournful, it was intelligent, challenging and very worthwhile to witness. And surprising. It is not often that one gets to see the romantic leads, literally, dance in a pool of water (the splashing was beautifully lit), nor have I ever seen necrophilia ever so movingly portrayed. It was dramatically dark and was a perfect Russkie-Iberico mix (choreographed by Olga Poritz).

16th November, I was at the Bolshoi again for the Shostakovich ballet, ‘The Bright Stream’. The orchestra was on top-form (courtesy I think of conductor, Pavel Sorokin, who I think is a real maestro). My program notes highlighted Andrey Merkuriev (I am a fan), Ruslan Skvortsov – no great actor, but well-suited for this part – and Yekaterina Shipulina. The comedic role danced by Irina Zibrova was also a highlight. But I think the best performance was Kseniya Pchelkina – incidentally an unusual Russian surname – as Galya, the schoolgirl. Bright stream is that wonderful, if very rare, night at the theatre: a comedy by Shostakovich.

19th November and for the 3rd time this season I saw the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko’s ‘Chaika’. I l.o.v.e. this ballet. There was a slightly worrying opening when the otherwise excellent (and convincingly impetuous) Kostya (danced by Dmitriy Khamzin) handled Veleria Mukhanova (dancing the role of Nina) rather like a leg of lamb in Smithfield market. Opening nerves, I think, and he later truly excelled…he is a hugely talented young dancer and each performance I see of him is better and better: definitely a long-term talent to watch.

If is fashionable to direct Chaika (the Seagull) in a slightly Oedipal context these days, at least in the theatre. This ballet is no exception. Tatiana Chernobrovkina, as Irina, Kostya's mother, milked every cent out of that idea. And hers was a delicious performance. As I have said before, this is one of the most invigorating ballet productions I have ever seen and I just love how fresh and vital it is.

2nd December and, back at the Bolshoi, I enjoy another viewing of ‘Night of American Ballet’. I always try to go whenever ‘In the Upper Room’ is on (the Bolshoi has performed this one act piece eight times (?) and I have seen four of them).

Technically, this collection of three one act ballets is a is a ‘celebratory evening of 200 years of US-Russian diplomatic relations’ and a celebration of ‘American ballet’ (sic). Yeah right. The program is incredibly political and a huge bitch-slap towards American ‘Kulture’; but done in a hugely subtle (and therefore pas trop Sovietique way). The inner-truth, da vinci code-like (LOL), is in the program notes (along the lines of “there may be lots of ballet in America, but it is a land devoid of soul, culture and all the ballet there is stolen”).

Act one. Serenade. Music by Tchaikovsky, choreographed (1934?) by the Frenchman, Georges Balanchine. Um… this is a celebration of American ballet? Terribly dull, BTW, I am so over Balachine.

Then we saw the hugely mournful ‘Misericodes’ (choreography by [Englishman] Christopher Wheeldon, music by Arvo Pärt; an Estonian! Wonderful music actually, although a shockingly poor trombone soloist in the orchestra hid the fact well). Now, among serious ballet lovers, the jury is definitely out as to whether Christopher Wheeldon is a genius or an arse. Me? I am still deciding.

But the Bolshoi ballet notes leave no room for doubt in their propaganda: “…like the royal court for the long-awaited miraculous birth of [a] Princess…[t]hey rocked this ‘Wheeldon’ in its cradle, they [the American ballet establishment] played with it, gave it toys and were certain it was a genius though the infant has not yet managed to create anything brilliant. They loved it, they forgave it, they laid their hopes on it. This became the élan vitale of the trade union of American ballet critics…This story is therefore more interesting as the trade union of US ballet critics is made up of mostly ladies and young women with problems in their private lives [read: lesbians]”. Hysterical! [extract from the official program essay by Pavel Gershenzon].

“They preach feminism and Marxism,” like, it sniffs, they have nay the real idea, “they hate children and independent men”. You couldn’t make this shit up!! You have to admire the sheer brass balls of post-Soviet, Putinista Russia. Because here, as ‘twas ever thus, art is politics, is culture is war by another means).

The evening ended with Twyla Tharp’s, ‘In the Upper Room’. I cannot describe how much I love this work; his music, the young Bolshoi soloists’ performance. For the duration it is just me and them on stage, tunnel-vision-like, and I am conscious of nothing else. Fantastic!

Four YouTube videos watched today

2007-12-08T18:31:00.000+03:00

I think this is the best issues-spot ever done by (a) any oil firm and (b) one of the best corporate issues-spot e.v.e.r. (I kind of love it and everything Chevron is doing on http://www.willyoujoinus.com/).

That made me laugh a lot today (I found it at SixtySecondView, the best PR blog in Europe). What follows is the antidote:

And, finally, an extraordinary comment piece from MSNBC. I don't think you would see something like that ever on Russian TV...

Team Putin - and butterflies broken upon wheels...

2007-12-08T16:46:00.000+03:00

For some time we’ve been advising clients that “it doesn’t matter who becomes the next President”; nor, indeed, whether “VVP decides to become Prime Minister after his term ends” (personally, I still would wager not). Why have we been so cavalier? Well, for some time we’ve been talking in terms of ‘Team Putin’. And Team Putin is now firmly entrenched everywhere you would need. Result? Political and economic stability, no macro policy changes, business-power elites left intact (no more Yukos-type oligarch collapses)...blah, blah...

That’s what we’ve been saying.

I wonder whether the issue isn’t more complicated now?

Elitny Russia has been watching, if not with slackened jaw, then certainly with a discreet sparkle-in-the-eye and mild acid-reflux, two apparently connected issues. The Oleg Shvartsman debacle and the apparent crashing and burning of the President of Rosneft.

Until a week or so ago, it is doubtful if even his mother gave much thought to the business dealings of Oleg Shvartsman. But then he gave an interview to Kommersant (link to ENG version) and, boy!, did that change.

The interview seemingly lifted the lid off of a whole scam by Kremlin-insiders, Putinisti-to-the-bone to be sure, but ones likely to be losing political power after VVP’s term ends May 1st next year (the election, as was recently confirmed, will be 2nd March).

What was remarkable about the Kommersant interview was how brazen was the thinking behind the ‘velvet re-privatization’. Some excerpts follow:

“It is very impressive for a little-known company. So, do you own or manage it all?”

“Both. Yet, it is much intertwined: we are closely affiliated with some political figures, and we manage their assets. We are related both to the presidential administration and to its power bloc...

“The true ownership structure is not disclosed, isn’t it?”

“There are various off-shores, in Cyprus and other countries...There are individuals among them, all relatives, from FSB or SVR.”

“What are other political connections involved?”

“...our colleagues from FSB decided there should appear an organization which would bend, bow, torture, and impose social responsibility on all sorts of Khodorkovskys…”

“A kind of ‘collective wringer’?”

“Right. It has all power ministries among its trustees: the Defense Ministry, the Emergency Situations Ministry, and the Interior Ministry. However, executives and directors changed because there were conflicts and feud. For instance, someone would press down a major businessman. He would make a phone call or two, and everyone would say: “Stop, wait”. So, it became clear the instrument isn’t working, because every tycoon has relations with the same power agencies. Consequently, the concept was altered; no one wanted to argue, and we were asked to find a new function for the organization.”

“What is the direction in which you plan to develop?”

“We now develop a structure which is to transform into a state corporation soon. It will be called Social Investments. It is based on the ‘velvet re-privatization’ concept which we developed together with the Russian State Service Academy and the National Economy Academy....

“What does it look like?”

“Like a vacuum cleaner, that gathers the assets for a structure which later becomes a state corporation...

“So, you have actually received a sort of authorization for carrying out corporate raids with using the power factor?”

“These are not raids. We do not take enterprises away. We minimize their market value by means of various instruments [like the tax police, the environmental regulator, the consumer regulator...oh yes, like in Lukoil, Total, Shell, TNK-BP etc: Exile]. As a rule, these are voluntary-coercive methods. There is the market value, the mechanism to block its growth, and, certainly, various administrative levers. However, people usually figure out where we come from…

“Are these people satisfied… or do they object?”

“No, why should they. We all live without bodyguards. In fact, everyone understands that it is our state task, that we’ve been commissioned with doing it. Unless we do it, others will come, and they will be carrying out the function of consolidating assets in the state’s hands just like we are doing it now, because it is the current state policy.”

Yes, I of course know that is the state's policy, but it isn't nice to have it rubbed in our faces so. People who know me have, on occasion, accused me of being chorus boy and cheerleader for the Russian govenrment. Well, after reading that interview, let's just say that, for a day or so, I was pretty mute.

The interview went around the Russian blogosphere in same morning and the power-elites have been discussing little else ever since. Kommersant is even threatening to sue the hapless Shvartsman for his desperate fight-back that he was radically misquoted.

At the same time, in the second case, we have the allegedly imminent ousting of Rosneft President Sergei Bogdanchikov. Apparently, the rumour goes, Rosneft Chairman, Putin confidante and old KGB insider, Igor Sechin wants Bogdanchikov’s job. Personally that sounds to me like asking J Edgar Hoover to be CEO of ExxonMobil…nah; he wore a dress and was not so scary…but it is more like asking Robespierre to be CEO of Total.

Rosneft has had a disappointing share price run recently and hasn’t benefited from the epic oil prices of recent months (the graph shows Rosneft’s share price - rebased to 100 from its IPO - and relative to the main global oil & gas index). Russian oil stocks have lost out – because the higher the oil price – the bigger the slice the state takes. On one level, that is sensible (because oil price is not controlled by management, so why reward management for something they didn’t achieve themselves). On the other hand, right now, the lower returns on Russian oil companies means that – globally – the Russian oil sector is, bizarrely, less attractive a place to invest that fiscal regimes with a standard flat hydrocarbon extraction tax.

I am not sure that these maneuverings aren’t really just the sign that some key political figures, having loyally served VVP, are now looking to monetarize their government connections and experience. Like Prime Minister Blair’s book deal. Of course, this being Russia, the numbers are bigger, and the connection between business and politics….well, it is not so pretty.

It does, though, beg the question. With this ‘velvet re-privatization’ in place, what is to stop the entourage around the next President from shifting the industrial wealth of Russia into their hands?

If they do that, just how tough with the Team Putin crew be then?

And how reliable the current power elties?

PS: word reaches me that two of the suggested Presidential successors, 1st Deputy Prime Ministers Dmitri Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov are both appalled by what Sechin & Co are doing and may actually be keeping a rather chilly distance from VVP. Incredible if true. Perhaps it is time to remind ourselves that, like financial markets, history does not move in a straight direction.

Election...um... fever... really?

2007-12-02T17:05:00.000+03:00

It is quite hard to drum up too much enthusiasm for an election which is a foregone result. Through the western media - not the Russian media, natch - I have been reading about the state employees forced to get absentee-ballot papers and fill them out in front of their State bosses (sounds like New Labour in the Midlands if you ask me, but...) and other expected shenanigans.

I tried to encourge my colleagues with some election excitement (I am sure, inwardly, they were all going yay!). Inter alia, I emailed all my Russian staff:

"Do enjoy your right to cast your vote this weekend. Who you vote for, of course, is none of my business, but do vote. “History is made by those who show up” etc…

"I won't tell you how to vote – I remember, one time at Cambridge, when the University Catholic Priest said to us after Mass one Sunday before an Election: “Boys, I won’t tell you how to vote next week…but do remember that Our Lady wears a blue mantle”.

"Oh, but, by the way, there is no greater symbol of Russian patriotism than a lovely Russian bear…"

Of course, Yedinaya Rossiya (United Russia, VVP's party) is going to storm it by a landslide; and in some of the... oh... 95,000 polling stations or thereabouts things may not be as the OSCE would dream of in a perfect world. But here are some personal observations.

If the neo-facists of the LDPR well, that will be the people's choice and not VVP's machinations. Mad bad Zhirinovsky is long-past his sell-by date. If the Communists get in, ditto. Actually, the demographic analysis of 'shares our values' polling I was fascinated to be shown confidentially was eye-opening in terms of 'reversion to cultural mean average' which is going on here.

The CP seems to be doing better than it has done for years and has elements of solid support amongst over 50s and under 25s. The latter is fascinating and, unlike most other democracies I know well, there is a real linkage of values and political ideas between these groups, not shared by the over 25s to under 55s: they think unfettered capitalism has been bad for Russia (I guess that means me folks) and want more state intervention in the economy and better pensions for their grandparents. Many of these under 25s were brought up largely by their grandmothers (remember average male life expectancy is about 58 years here) while the parents worked the 18 hours a day to scrimp together the food and clothing for subsistence living. These under 25s are fiercely loyal to their olds in a way we just don't see in the west; and were brought up on stories of fatherland and how under the USSR there was order and justice. Go figure...

Many of these under 25s are Putinistas to their core; and the generation VVP is banking on to fulfill his plans to transform Russia. But this generation also don't want conscription and want their iPod...and an iPhone... Now please.

Certainly, if the free-market liberals (the SPS) get seats - this is unlikely - then definitely the election will have been less rigged than the western media claim.

Either way, I still think this is all part of Step-1-2-3 that VVP has in mind for Russia. Step 1, a State Duma dominated by United Russia (think US Republican party, without the religious nuts and the whole let's-war-in-Iraq brigade); Step-2, someone of the same cloth elected President March 2nd 2008; Step-3 - and VVP doesn't need to become Prime Minister to achieve this because enough Team Putin-types are already in all the key posts - ensure transfer of real power from Presidency to Duma. Voilà, sustainable Parliamentary democracy and a structural check/balance on another Stalin ever assuming the Tsar's throne in the Kremlin. Easy huh?

This is managed democracy and, on a 20-30 year view sets up a democratizing path for Russia which no-one can really complain about. The 'I-want-it-all-and-I-want-it-right-now' democrats need to get real. Overnight, unfettered democracy in Russia would lead to mayhem and quite possibly the violent breakdown of the Federation. VVP's way may not be pretty, or speedy, but for the next generation of Russians, it might get the job done.

And if you think Russian democracy without Putin is clear, logical and OSCE friendly, see this YouTube piece from the SPS (those nice, western-style, free-market liberals, remember them?). It is in Russian, but you don't need to speak a word to get what they're saying about Putin. That he actually is satan...

"Glory to the employees of the security organs of the Russian Federation!"

2007-11-09T14:13:00.000+03:00

Tomorrow, November 10th, is the annual Militia Day in Moscow. One year, I recall, this involved the partial closure of the Garden Ring for the 'Militia Marathon', where State TV broadcast how fighting-fit the Moscow Militia is. hmm...

Who knows what fun this year will bring?

Just remember, on this day of the year it is polite to smile and say 'thank you' and 'sir' if they try to extract any bribe from you for a perceived sleight. Tomorrow is their day, so be generous!

Help (or an AK47) is just a phone-call away

2007-11-08T22:01:00.000+03:00

One of the 'perks' of my job - but one you sort of hope you will never have to use -is access to the CIS protection service from MIG Security service. The idea is that you have them on short-dial on your phone, your 'crash' code pre-programed.

I have only used them...ahem...once or twice in three years. And today was, amusingly, the first time in ages. From Office #1 in Paveletskaya to my home near Patriasrshy Prudy is usually about 30 minutes by car (but only 15 minutes in the opposite direction, which is odd). Today I was taking a taxi, which journey usually begins with the usual hand-wringing about the Moscow traffic (yawn!).

But 45 minutes later, as we approached the MKAD - hello? - visions of being whisked off and ransomed swam before my eyes....well I am severely sleep-deprived at the moment, having been pushing myself crazily and just returned from a whistle-stop trip to Astana.

So I dialled my crash code. It's an impressive in-your-own-language service and, as I prepared to hand the phone over to the driver - "you are to explain exactly where you are driving right now and why; and If they are not happy, they will track us down and get us" (I never how how they do this, but apparently the nearest Militia car can come to the rescue).

I then remembered a friend of mine who has used this service once 'in anger', so-to-speak. Even in jam-packed Moscow, they sent two bullet-proofed cars, with AK47-wielding guys, to effect 'fast extraction'. Apparently it is a great way to impress the ladies.

This trip didn't come to that. But I certainly felt reassured; not least when I saw the driver look at me wearily and with some more respect after the call. He didn't dare over-charge me!

Afterwards I bought a new mink hat, in quiet, small celebration...well, it is getting way cold here right now.

A new Season underway...

2007-10-14T13:28:00.000+04:00

I don't know why the sudden blogging hiatus - people go through phases I suppose - although this summer (for the first time since I started following blogs) the whole English-language blogosphere seems to have gone through some sort of collective sigh of ennui...

...part of the resason for which may be the rise of Facebook. I have become a Facebook whore. It's incredibly addictive and just crystallizes how brilliant social networking can be. It has put me back in touch with school friends whom I would never usually drop an email to, randomly, but the fact I read their Facebook updates, and they mine, sparks a dialogue which otherwise would be lost. I think it genuinely adds the humanity back to the Internet (and, perhaps, in contrast, can make blogging look rather sterile). Facebook-is-conversation:-blogging-is-rhetoric kind of thing.

Anyway, as winter hits Moscow - grump - I will start blogging again. A random email conversation (the opera/ballet season is only just a week old):

Red Exile replying to a friend on Facebook:

Hi there. Yes the little angels getting me down yesterday. Jean Jacques [very French bistro on Nikitsky Boulevard, rapidly becoming expat heaven in the heart of Moscow] I haven't been to yet, but my colleague swears by it. I might check it out tonight! Friday's Bolshoi was the new production of Corsaire - so-so I thought - more a parade of fiddly dance show-offy bits than a richly compelling narrative, and the music left me unmoved; but I was so tired from only having 2-3 hours the night before (overnight train to Moscow from Kyiv) that I wasn't on my best.

I have tickets for Norma at the Novaya Opera tonight, but not sure I am in the mood for Bellini.

Hot things in opera and ballet this season? Well, actually I think this side of Christmas the Bolshoi is looking rather tame (apart from the 'Kings of the Dance'; a four night spectacular, which is sold out but scalpers are now selling tickets for about $300 each, but fortunately I bought mine ages ago); so I have temporarily transferred my affections to the Stanislavski-Nemirovich-Danchenko (theatre on Dmitrovka Pereulok).

I think their new ballet, 'Chaika' (based on Chekov's seagull) is very fresh and has some interesting music, including Scottish percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie! [she has a great website! and an amazing life story] The production has a fine young cast and is another Moscow work for Hamburg ballet's John Neumeier, who did the Bolshoi's production of Midsummer Night's Dream and whose style of melding traditional with avant-garde, both musically and in terms of dance I think very intelligent and emotionally charged. Below is a YouTube piece from Kyltura TV on Chaika - it's in Russian, but you'll get a flavour of what this production is like:

Last week there, on the opera side, I just loved their Carmen: the tenor singing Don José, Mikhail Vekya, is just INCREDIBLE. He doesn't look how you imagine Don Jose to look, but the sound is extraordinary and he literally stole the show (there is a mirco-bio in Russian only here).

His final scene raised the hairs on the back of my neck and reminded me of another great Don José performance: check out José Carreras , from 1987 in New York, here.

The S-N-D is also organising 'Dance Inversion: international ballet festival' in November and I am going every night for about a week :) LOL

That's it for now from your Moscow arts correspondent!

"Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage"

2007-08-01T15:07:00.000+04:00

As I was editing, with one of my analysts, a presentation deck we're giving tomorrow, he laughed and said I reminded him of Rowan Atkinson...strangely, he still has a job here...

...apparently he was referring to this, that he had found on YouTube:

I gather he was referring to my urging him to "give it [the presentation] some more sex and sizzle".

Random email conversation today

2007-07-30T19:06:00.000+04:00

From: [Red Exile]
Sent: 30 July 2007 08:22
To: [UK political mate #2]
Subject: Good grief...

Kitty Usher is a UK Government minister?!?!? She’s a sweetie but, really, is that the best New Labour can do now (is this the same mousey little girl who was a member of the ‘Floral Street gang’* in 1998 and who then hung out at Britain in Europe?) Gosh.

FT flash extract
‘Hassle of Heathrow’ takes toll on City
By Christopher Adams, Political Correspondent
Published: July 29 2007 22:03 Last updated: July 29 2007 22:03
London’s status as one of the world’s leading financial centres risks being undermined by excessive delays at Heathrow and the airport’s sprawling layout, the new City minister warns on Monday.
In her first interview in the role, Kitty Ussher has told the Financial Times that the government shares business concerns about queues at passport control, the effect of security measures and the airport’s set-up...

[The Floral Street gang, by the way, was a group of about 10 of us that met in an apartment in the London street of the same name. Lobbyists, a civil servant or two, a BBC political journalist, the poltical editor of a major national newspaper and some senior Tories from the City of London, we started a grouping that became the later somewhat doomed 'Britain in Europe'. This - oh burn out my eyes - planned to be...the 'yes' campaign for the UK to join the Euro...

...I will remember the night well because I arrived late having been at a Labour party fundraising drinks party at the swish home of a UK celebrity and where Cherie Blair was guest of honour (she and I discussed the nude portrait of our host...Somewhat socially odd. Halcyon days...]

From: [UK political mate #2]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 1:15 PM
To: [Red Exile]
Subject: RE: Good grief...

The very same. She was Pat Hewitt's Special Adviser for a while 2001 - 2005ish, then became MP for Burnley in 05; became Hewitt's PPS, and now the heady heights of the Treasury. I think she is actually quite bright, and hopefully none of Hewitt's character will have rubbed off on her.

From: [Red Exile]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 1:17 PM
To: [UK political mate #2]
Subject: RE: Good grief...

But she is ‘here kitty, kitty…’ sweet.

The City will at best ignore her; at worst eat her alive.

Poor wee thing.

Cargo plane crash kills seven at Moscow airport

2007-07-29T19:06:00.000+04:00

"The plane, which belonged to the cargo airline Atran, was built in 1964..."

It was 43 years old.

Full report here and here.

End of the 2006/2007 Bolshoi Season

2007-07-29T16:17:00.000+04:00

Last week, having scored a front row seat from my usual dealer, I watched the fantastic end to the 2006/2007 Bolshoi season: the gala concert "all the stars of the Bolshoi ballet". It was an incredible show and a very high note on which to end a great season...no more Bolshoi Ballet now until October (!) - but they will be on tour in London and, I think, Berlin.

An orgy of YouTube discoveries follows [although, in truth, I am...ahem...unable to make any claims as that the permission of the copyright holders was always obtained, by the people who made these vids...oh well].

In the First Half, Maria Allash wowed us with her Aegina from Spartacus; while the prima ballerina goddess that is Svetlana Zakharova gave us her extraordinary solo piece, 'Revelation'

[taken from Russian TV, I think, sound quality not terribly good]

[choreography by Mitoso Hiroyama; to music by John Williams]

In the Second Half we were treated to a performance of Middle Duet, a fantastic piece choreographed by Bolshoi Artistic Director, Alexei Ratmansky (who I think is really coming into his own now and nudging the Bolshoi to do some really edgy, raw and wonderful pieces):

[piece taken from Kultura TV]

This is an extraordinarily beautiful piece I think (music by Yuri Khanon). The duet is between the sublime Natalia Osipova and Andrei Merkuriev; who is, IMHO, featured as a soloist not nearly enough by the Bolshoi. You can see almost the full Middle Duet here (performed in this version I think in Seoul, by St Petersburg's Mariinsky Ballet). BTW, the staging is supposed to start very dark, very dimly through the shadows...

That gay old trouper, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, and the dramatic Ilze Liepa, gave us their La Dame de Pique which I am coming to like (nothing on YouTube yet, sorry), although I find Tsiskaridze a little too hammy a performer for my taste...

The finale was Zhakharova and Denis Matvienko, and the full company, performing the Grand Pas from Don Quixote:

[an illicit recording of a 2006 performance by Matvienko]

But since I am show-casing ballet on YouTube, I offer these two discoveries.

The first is a piece that captures Carlos Acosta, whom I mentioned recently, as he performed the lead role in Spartacus:

As well as a fantastic segment of Twlya Tharp's In the Upper Room (music by Philip Glass), which I watched again on 14th July, with I think the best cast rotation for this piece (including Denis Savin, Alexander Smoliyaninov, Natalia Osipova and Andrei Merkuriev):

Flatlining: the near-term outlook for Russo-British relations

2007-07-22T16:50:00.000+04:00

I am really surprised – and a little disappointed that I have not posted in over three weeks – it has been quite a time. We go through these…phases…of being hugely overworked; then I get tired…and then ill. I have had a cold-fluey thing for over a week.

The Litvinenko saga has now, of course, segued into the Lugovoi saga and over the last week I was surprised to find myself in demand as a pundit for the BBC; commenting on the state of Russo-British relations. This had come about after I wrote a piece for one of the Moscow papers profiling Britain’s new Foreign Secretary, which appeared just as it became clear the UK government was about to deliver its response to Russia’s refusal to extradite Andrey Lugovoi.

So, over the last few days I have been on BBC TV 2’s ‘Daily Politics’ and BBC Radio 5’s “Wake up to Money”; interviewed twice by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes – very nice bloke – for BBC Radio’s ‘World Tonight’ and BBC TV 1’s ‘Six o’clock news’; as well as a live – and feisty appearance – on BBC World TV; just after the Russian foreign ministry bounced back their response to Britain’s response, as-it-were. [although a London friend sniffed: "well you've not done 'Newsnight' dear, so I should tone down the puppy-dog enthusiasm until you make it there...]

The BBC World presenter was, I could tell – remotely from the Moscow bureau where I could hear him but not, of course, see him – angry that I wasn’t towing the British line. Quite the contrary, I said, Russia’s behavior was “very restrained in the face of Britain’s provocation…and this restraint shows that President Putin’s Russia is committed to international partnership…but Britain must treat Russia with respect…”. Even I was slightly surprised I kept a straight face while saying this, it just tumbled out, albeit entirely on-message with the line I wanted to take.

These are the first times I have done TV or radio about Russia; but at another time in my career I did a lot of TV and radio. I reckon around 100 interviews by now, mostly live: I prefer live to pre-recorded, just because – and this is purely luck rather than skill – I can normally deliver answer the question and then pivot—to-message before most interviewers have thought what they want the next question to be…that extra 5 seconds+ or so they end up giving me, making all the difference. I love live broadcast (and secretly have a hankering to do more of it).

My mother – who only has a patchy grasp on current affairs at the best of times – telephoned me from rural France where she spends half the year, her husband having watched BBC World: “darling, I saw you on television. You’ve lost weight! Well done dear…”

So now each side has satisfied Sovereign honour, it that now it? Are we all back to normal in Russo-British relations? No. I think not. A hint of this was to be found in a report filed Friday on the RIA Novosti newswire, with comments from the president of Russia's Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Alexander Shokhin.

“Shokhin warned that British companies in Russia may now face difficulties with tax authorities and regulators, and that inspections may become more frequent. "Perhaps, under broadly equal conditions, some companies may fail to win tenders," he said.

“He said that U.K.'s decision to refuse entry visas to Russian officials could be easily applied to the executives of Russia's state-owned enterprises.”

A very sage observation, I would say. In contrast the Brits seem to believe that theirs is an inalienable right that all Russian IPOs, for instance, will go to London. Most of these British politicos are so arrogant and so out-of-touch. And the present government pretty clueless; not helped by the fact that the Russian Desk at the Foreign Office, IMHO, is still intellectually wedded in a 1990s-Atlantacist view of what Russia is, will become and how it should be treated.

In today’s UK media, the Sunday Times has it that, actually, the Brits believe the Litvinenko murder was the FSB. Balls.

- Lugovoi is not the person the FSB would use for this (still less the SVR), but he is the person you would hire for a rogue attack if you weren’t a state entity
- His past in the KGB 9th (Directorate; handles nuclear facility security and VIP protection) means he knows just who exactly to go to both to acquire the material and how to handle it so as not to kill himself
- A multi-million op is no problem for any of the super-rich to fund
There was no reason for the Russian state to kill Litvinenko (his allegations were old and tired and no longer passing the ‘so what’ test), but…
- …increasingly impoverished Litvinenko was rumoured to be for hire to peddle Kompromat on Russia’s new plutocracy. A fairly fatal error in anyone’s book.
- This was an oligarch-ordered killing. 50% likely to be one close to the Siloviki (which is a tad embarrassing for VVP and all) or 50% likely to be one of the diaspora, wanting a ‘false flag’ with which to condemn VVP in the eyes of the world: it was never a Government black op.

I watched – miracle of the Net – the British Foreign Secretary’s statement on Russia streamed live on the Internet. In amongst the toadies, in the subsequent Parliamentary Q&A there was some very good stuff. Sir Malcolm Rifkind – himself a Foreign Secretary – talked about using a Lockerbie trial-type solution. This is something I have written about elsewhere: judicious use of third countries for spying/terrorism trials. Prime Minister Brown disses this idea – “This was a serious crime in Britain…the murder of a British citizen…Britain is the only place for a trial” – one hears the Ministry of Justice doesn’t like a precedent being set that suggests extra-jurisdictional trials are acceptable. Hmm…Do the British actually want a trial or not? They're not being very imaginative about getting one.

In secret bilateral talks, I have cautious optimism that the Russians could agree to an English-law trial taking place in Russia. The British prebuttal of this – our law wouldn’t allow this* - seemed to me extraordinary. How can the UK expect Russia to change its constitution to accommodate London, when not itself prepared to amend its own Administrative law.

* The situation was different for the Lockerbie trial, because that was taking place under the the separate system of law that Scotland enjoys.

In the last few days, I have had some interesting feedback. The expat community in Moscow thinks the British have engaged into a course of action that, while never seriously likely to bring forward a trial (almost as if they don’t really want one), does make the new Prime Minister and his government look ‘tough and strong’ to the British people.

Some Russian contacts, however, say that the eventual, highly moderate response of the Russians only just came about. In truth there was a lot of anger in the Kremlin and several blocks sought a much, much tougher and asymmetric response. One of those most angry, indeed, was VVP himself (he has a very thin skin, actually, people forget and is quick to take offense). Foreign Minister Lavrov and also, I heard, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin made a sustained and successful argument persuading more moderation by way of response.

A quick catch-up on the last three weeks

2007-07-22T16:02:00.000+04:00

29th June – last flight?

By now you must have figured I have become very scared of flying. This is despite the fact that I estimate that I have easily done over 300 international flights since moving to Moscow in Spring 2004 and; in my lifetime? Easily over 1,000 (I was an ex-pat brat).

Anyway, something snapped when I took the afternoon AeroSvit from Kyiv to Moscow. We landed in the immediate prelude to a huge thunder storm. On landing the plane was wildly erratic and at less than 50 metres I would judge the engines roared and we did a go around. Having landed on the second attempt, and exiting the plane there was this huge downward gust of pressure – wind shear: the invisible plane killer.

Wind shear scares me silly out here: CIS airports almost never have, I’m told, wind shear radar on the ground and these twenty-five year old Boeings and the Soviet planes don’t have on-board wind shear detectors.

So, suddenly, dust and rubbish shot up into the end before a squal of blackness crossed across the runway. As we bussed into Terminal 1c you couldn't actually see terminal 2 – just straight across the runway – because visibility sank to nothing as a huge storm crack overhead and the heavens opened…

…and I have not been on a plane since. A whole month without flight (when I normally do three flights a week). I have to do something about this, because soon my bosses will notice…I recently asked my Chief of Staff to look into taking the Moscow-Budapest-Moscow train for a Board conference in September: madness! But might be kind of fun…there’s something sexy and glamorous about Eastern European train travel (well not if you’re not in first class, granted), which air travel these days can’t match (except on those long, epicurean and pampering transcontinental flights to the Middle East).

I have done three trips to Kyiv. Each by train. Train #1 out of Moscow (dep 23.20, arr. 08.30) and Train #2 out of Kyiv on the way back (dep. 20.17, arr. 06.39). I always book a twin-person carriage for myself and usually now take a small night-time picnic,

Customs and immigration out of Russia, in Souzemka, and Khoutir-Mikhailivskiy in Ukraine are a pain (the towns are 20 minutes apart and the Russian side is very slow, but at least they come on board to your carriage). They wake you up at around 1.00am back into Russia, but I get back to sleep afterwards; on the way in, the wake up is 4.00am (finishing around 5.00am) and so I watch dawn in Ukraine, not bothering to go back to sleep.

The Ukrainian side also now have PDAs (which is why they are faster than the Russians) so are able to do onboard registration on my entry (whereas the Russians have to alight from the train and call in my visa details for clearance).

6th July – weird things

I had been in Kyiv again (actually I have dropped by the office for a couple of days every week over the last month) and had a very interesting meeting with a future force in Ukrainian politics, now launching his own NGO: he’s a very high-powered local lawyer.

The Ambassador of a small Central European country and I share the same taste in whiskey…and bars. He’s become quite my regular drinking/talking global politics buddy. For some reason I think this very cool...

At 1.30am – waiting to enter Russia, I am awake on the train and a journalist friend calls from Doha, in Qatar. And we’re chatting – via satellites bouncing a signal Lord knows where – me being all George Smiley on my post-Soviet overnight train and yet, also, chatting to a mate at a party in the Middle East…

…who then worried me because he was heading out on a trip with Hezbollah into Southern Lebanon. Now this is a patch I know (and if you know Lebanon well, Hezbollah is all part of the scene) and I say: “Dude, down to Sidon, you’ll be fine, just stay north of Sidon” “er…” he replies, “I am going well South of Sidon”.

So we chat and I point out that while his employer might be an Arabic TV station, he’s a blonde English guy and the Hezbs in Southern Lebanon aren’t the diplomatic dandies in Beirut we know, but are ‘the real thing’ and might not welcome a Brit. That and the Israelis have been shooting at TV cars across the borderline (because sometimes Hezb pretends to be TV). So I was kind of worried for my friend…

We spoke a week later, he partying in Damascus – damn I love that City – and he clearly has some good war-stories: being shoved into a cell overnight with armed guards for instance: “but we got some great shots and broadcast live way farther South than the BBC or CNN would ever dare”…which is what passes for delivering understanding into global living rooms apparently.

8th July Spartak!

A one-night only special starring the Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta. There is a good piece about this on Russia Today (LOL – that’s a sentence hardly ever used!).

Acosta was quite extraordinary and, as I was chatting with a friend afterwards in post-performance dinner at café des Artistes, sitting outside, we agreed it was one of the highlights of the Bolshoi this season…and then Acosta comes to the restaurant with a small entourage. He’s charming and has excellent English (he’s danced with the English National and the Royal). He’ll be guest-starring with the Bolshoi this Summer at Covent Garden in London. Mug or steal yourself a ticket if you’ll be in town…

Tonight – 22nd July – I am going to the Close of Season Gala Concert, with all the leading Bolshoi Ballet stars. It should be a wonderful night…but then no Bolshoi until October 5th…

…I must travel abroad – the summer ballets put on at the country estates outside Moscow are very bourgeois and ‘chocolate box-y’.

Now then, how to get from Moscow to London, without flying, by train…

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't

2007-06-27T22:30:00.000+04:00

Although by no means free, I find the news feeds pumped out daily by Business New Europe to be really helpful and interesting: I'm a fan (except, maybe, when they try to write about politics) and I think their service is worth the Euros 300 or so a year to subscribe to the feeds that cover my patch.

This came through the other day as an extract from a (forthcoming?) Alfa Bank report. Looks like it will be worth begging, borrowing or stealing a copy, if you're not already an Alfa investment banking client...

The emerging 4x4 Energy Strategy

Alfa,
Russia
Tuesday, June 26, 2007

While the government has never formally clarified its strategy for either its involvement in the oil and gas sector in Russia or its plans to help Russian companies expand internationally, both upstream and downstream, we now have almost enough evidence allowing us to build a model of how it is most likely to work. That is, at least based on current evidence, best described as the "4x4 Energy Strategy".

The four domestic strategies are:

• State companies control 51% of all major energy projects.
• An international energy major is included in each project with an equity participation of 25%. That company will more often than not be the operator of the project.
• The remaining 24% is eventually allocated in several smaller lots to National Oil Companies from other countries (e.g. China, Malaysia, India, etc) for which the Kremlin has bartered greater energy cooperation in exchange for some reciprocal trade, investment or political deals.
• The next major investment theme will be to concentrate on downstream processing of greater volumes of gas and oil inside Russia so as to eventually have a better balance between the export of raw material and higher value-added products from the raw material.

The four international strategies are:

• Access to international upstream and downstream projects for Russia's National Champions Companies by bartering reciprocal deals in upstream Russian oil and gas.
• Creating JVs with international energy majors to facilitate access to politically and economically sensitive downstream, particularly in both LNG and natural gas distribution.
• To develop Russia's National Champion Companies to eventually rank amongst the world's biggest energy giants.
• To have a controlling/influential role in export routes from Russia and the CIS countries.

Note: This is a subject and theme to be written about separately later.
RBL-4-260607

Ideas clarified? Or the dumbing down of geopolitics?

2007-06-24T15:24:00.000+04:00

As I was cruising round the английский-Russkie blogosphere (OK, so the link goes to one in German, so sue me!) this morning I came across the Inglehart Values Map. This is another attempt to squeeze all the multi-national complexities of the world into a nicely digestible 2 x 4 palimpsest of the truth. Another example of this phenomenon is the Vomitously-named ‘Global Peace Index’, which was promoted – excellently, BTW, even if it was a naff product – by Edelman. Russia scored incredibly badly on that index: in a league of Sudan, Nigeria, Israel and ... oh yes... Iraq; which seems extraordinary to me. These other countries are cleaved, literally, more or less in half by civil war – if you count Palestinians as equal occupiers of that land too – while Nigeria is just one bad week away from becoming the next Somalia.

This is not true of Russia. Chechnya, which is now almost quiescent – was never a wedge deep across the whole nation; rather it was more like Northern Ireland; a local dispute which was, for the most part, contained and not at all reflective of the wider national conversation (rare hot-spot troubles aside).

So, anyway, the latest example of intellect-lite. The World Values map – which I reproduce below:

Now I am not going to diss this completely – because inasmuch as you can use a bi-linear analysis to summarise the world, it’s not utterly useless. The problem of course is the extent to which you have to adopt completely faux parameters in order make your pretty global picture.

For while I can see that there is some validity to creating a spectrum that runs from ‘traditional values’ through to ‘secular-rational values’; it seems to me that ‘spectrumizing’ – ugh, sorry for that word, but somehow seems to fit here – “survival values’ through to ‘Self expression values’ is invalid.

The survey says of its methodology:

“The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies - which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values.”

Nice. So, mate, where would you put Lebanon on that map? People who know me know I am besotted with truly-madly-deeply wonderful Beirut. But, go on: where would you put Lebanon? Indeed, interestingly, I see this map seems to have forgotten the Middle East almost entirely… because Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the Emirates, even Syria, just don’t fit the picture. Ditto, mutatis mutandis, where’s Israel on it? Also, do I really believe that Shinto-revivalist Japan has abandoned religion as much as this survey suggests?

This habit of making pretty pictures and league tables as a substitute to real thinking of course is not new. It all started, with a vengeance, in the 1970s with the management consultants, Boston Consulting Group; who managed to fit any business you care to mention into one of four inter-locked boxes. The BCG boxes still hold pretty valid – I use them myself – but as our world hurtles faster and faster – thank you technology – to some neo-medieval clash of civilizations, we need much better foreign policy education.

After the calamity of the first half of the twentieth century, the age of gentleman-amateurs conducting foreign policy came to an end (Viscount Halifax being a notoriously good example) and we began to professionalize our approach to foreign affairs: hence the explosion in all those international relations and foreign relations courses. We need, again, a new approach to managing geo-eco-political issues. Cute boxes won’t cut it.