Pskov

Pskov, March 13, Interfax - Participants in the procession with the cross that has marched from Moscow through St. Petersburg to Pskov have installed on Tuesday a reverence cross at the Dno railway station near Pskov, where the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II abdicated from the throne in 1917.

There were many children among those who carried the cross. As the St. Andrew’s Flag Foundation has informed Interfax, some icons of the holy Czar Nicholas II carried by the procession exuded myrrh.

After the installation of the cross, the procession marched on to Pskov, where Archbishop Yevsevy of Pskov and Velikiye Luki led the clergy, monastic and the faithful in a thanksgiving said at the Chapel of the Royal Passion-Bearers.

The procession began and ended at the Church of Our Lady of Kazan at Kolomenskoye in Moscow where the Icon of Our Lady the Powerful had been found. On March 15, the Divine Liturgy at the Church of Our Lady of Kazan will be celebrated by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia.

There will be a national procession with the cross to march from the Church-on-the-Blood in Yekaterinburg on Thursday. The Icon of Our Lady the Powerful will be taken to many churches and monasteries in the diocese and will be sent to Kursk in mid-April. In mid-June, on the eve of the commemoration day of the holy royal martyrs, the icon will be brought back to Yekaterinburg.

This year will mark the 90th anniversary of the emperor Nicholas II’s abdication and the 90th anniversary of the finding of the Icon of Our Lady the Powerful.

Here is a not an accurate and biased article with some stereotypes of any foreigner from Western Europe, but we publish it since it covers the same problem we have been writing for so many.

-------------------------------
Thousands of Russians may have been poisoned by bootleg alcohol containing medical disinfectant causing drinkers' skin to turn yellow before they fall dangerously ill or die.

Pskov is the end of the line. I got off the Moscow overnight express and the earth started to buckle in front of me.

On the Pskov express I had played chess with a couple of Russians, the vodka bottles had come out, and soon every move of a pawn was celebrated with a toast.

If you're interested, I was about to win when the Russian bloke nicked my queen - anyway, I had had enough to drink to kill a small horse.

There is something about the light - or the lack of it - that eats the soul in Russia, that makes you drink. The dark days in winter, the grimness of ordinary life. They say one in six Russians is an alcoholic.

That is why President Putin, the former KGB man, is something of a puritan - at least in public.

He has brought in a series of laws, tripling the price of vodka and threatening dire penalties if people drink black market moonshine, which they call samogon.

And that is, of course, what everybody who can't afford shop-bought vodka does.

They called it the yellow death. It started in the summer when dozens of people turned up in casualty, a vile shade of yellow.

The dozens turned to hundreds, then a thousand. The better cases recovered, but will die long before their time.

The worst cases? Natasha is not yet 30, she's got a seven-year-old boy called Maxim and she has less than a year to live.

Her whole body has gone yellow - an instantly recognisable feature of toxic hepatitis.

Something has destroyed her liver and now all the natural toxins in the body are stacking up.

Her own body is poisoning her and there is nothing medicine - or at least nothing state medicine in Russia - can do about it.

Natasha and everyone else in the hospital corridors had bought samogon, moonshine, as usual - but something had been added to it.

Clear liquid

In Pskov, the authorities have tracked more than 1,000 poisonings with 120 dead.
Across Russia as a whole, officials have not counted, but some estimate 10,000 poison cases and 1,000 dead.

So who is responsible for this mass poisoning? I had gone to Pskov to try to get to the bottom of the yellow death.

We made friends with a gentlemanly Russian, Alexei, who was also an alcoholic, gave him a secret camera bag and sent him off to buy the samogon moonshine.

The plan was that we would then get it tested and analysed to see what the problem was. He bought the stuff for 20 roubles ($0.80, £0.40), a clear liquid in an old Coke bottle. I had a quick sniff.

The bouquet - rocket fuel with a touch of boot polish. And a quick gulp.

In the film Flash Gordon, the heroine is given a slug of bright green alcohol so that she can bear to sleep with Emperor Ming The Merciless. It tasted something like that.

We filmed the local cops going round busting all the little people, the street traders in samogon.

The local chief of police in Pskov, Gen Sergei Matveyev - a plump bureaucrat with a fatter gold watch - was not keen to tell me what was the most likely source of the poison.

Not many in authority give much of a damn about the nameless wretches of the earth: winos, moral degenerates.

The sense that many of the yellow people were ordinary Russians who had been poisoned through no great fault of their own seemed to be missing.

Medical disinfectant

A doctor told me that the most likely cause was something which had been added to the moonshine - polyhexamethylene biguanide hydrochloride.

And that stuff had got on the market as a medical disinfectant, Extrasept. It was 95% pure alcohol and tax exempt - making it cheaper than moonshine.

Dodgy traders had mixed the cheaper Extrasept with the home-made samogon - and made a killing.

It was only once I had learnt about polyhexo that I got seriously worried about the samogon I had drunk. It might have been contaminated too. Had I poisoned myself? Was I going to turn yellow, too?

We set off from Pskov to St Petersburg, to the Institute of Toxicology. They had been feeding Extrasept to rats. The results were inconclusive. I brought along a little bottle of the stuff I had drunk. They tested it and they found no polyhexo, so I was clean.

The Extrasept factory was a vast sprawling mess in Alexandrov - a town associated with Ivan the Terrible.

The technical director said there was nothing wrong with his product - and he even drank some to prove it. I asked him: "You're not afraid of turning yellow, are you?".

Later, when we got back to London, we had Extrasept tested on human liver cells - and it killed every single one.

Pskov, Russia, March 1 (NNN-BELTA) Belarus and Russia are drafting an inter-governmental agreement on mutual supplies of military products in wartime, the deputy chairman of the Russian-Belarusian inter-governmental commission for military-technical co-operation, Vladimir Drozhzhov, stated Tuesday at a seminar of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Belarus-Russia Union State in Pskov, northwest Russia.

According to him, the agreement will be drafted on the initiative of the Belarusian side. The document has already been co-ordinated in the Russian Federation and has been submitted for consideration of the government of the Republic of Belarus. “The necessity to conclude the agreement arose during the joint command-headquarters game played by the defense ministries of Belarus and Russia,” Drozhzhov said.

At present the level of integration between the two states in the military-technical field is rather high. Belarusian companies are involved in executing the Russian state defence orders.

According to Drozhzhov, the current Belarusian-Russian agreement of 1994 on mutual supplies of military component parts and equipment has become outdated.

“That is why we have drafted a corresponding agreement on inter-action in designing, exploiting, repairing, modernizing and destroying military equipment. The agreement is of a multi-sided format bearing in mind the fact that it will be signed by all members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO),”, he said.

According to him, the document has already been considered by all CSTO countries and will be included in the agenda of the meeting of the interstate commission for military-economic cooperation, scheduled for March this year in Moscow.

Meanwhile, Belarus has suggested to Russia that a Union State programme on designing future weapons and materials covering the 2008-2010 period should be worked out. The statement was made by Sergei Turbin, head of the defence support agency of the State Defence Industries Committee of Belarus, at the Belarusian-Russian parliamentary seminar on military affairs in Pskov on Wednesday.

He said Belarus and Russia were working hard to build up the existing legal base of the military and technical cooperation. In particular, a new agreement was being developed to replace and expand clauses of the 1994 treaty on mutual supplies of military hardware components.

“Laws of Belarus and Russia allow supplying components only to produce military products. The option is not available for repairs, modernization and other kinds of work,” explained Turbin.

Therefore, it was decided to work out a new Belarusian-Russian agreement on cooperation for the design, exploitation, repair and modernization, extension of service life and utilization of military products.

According to the representative of the State Defence Industries Committee of Belarus, the Belarusian side is revising a draft bilateral agreement, which regulates the supply of military products in a period of threat and wartime.

“The problem is when the military and political tensions are escalating and the military threat is on the rise, a state’s demand for arms, materials and other defence products soars. We used a war game training plan to prepare a list of such products,” he said.

“Certain problem aspects have been unearthed. For example, the Russian Federation does not manufacture certain products, as several assembling lines have been put in dead storage.” Turbin said next week the Belarusian government would complete revising the agreement.

Regulations have been developed to fulfil the agreement: it has been defined who compiles lists of defensive products each side needs in a period of threat, who is contacted for adjusting these lists, how these demands meet the production capacity of defence industries, what decisions need to be taken if these or those products are not manufactured and some other aspects, added Turbin.

In addition, the problem of providing Belarusian defence industries with military standards of Russia is being resolved. “These military standards are not supposed to leave the country of origin. It was decided to handle the problem within the CSTO framework,” he added.

“A session of the interstate military and economic cooperation commission took place in Bishkek to consider the development of regulations concerning the provision of CSTO member-states with military standards of Russia. It was decided that Russia together with Belarus would develop a simplified procedure for supplying defence industries fulfilling the CSTO’s defence contracts with Russia’s military standards.”

By Denis Pinchuk

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Regional polls in Russia next Sunday may be a blueprint for nationwide elections in the coming 18 months. If they are, the Kremlin's harshest critics will be watching the national votes from the sidelines.

The March 11 elections for local legislatures in 14 of Russia's nearly 90 regions have seen an unusually high number of parties -- most of them Kremlin critics -- barred from taking part on technical grounds.

Those left out accuse the Kremlin of trying to purge Russian politics of its most awkward opponents in preparation for a parliamentary vote in December and, most importantly, a presidential poll in 2008.

President Vladimir Putin is to step down after that vote and analysts say Kremlin political managers want no surprises as they try to engineer a smooth handover of power to a favoured successor, whom Putin has yet to name.

In Russia's second city of St Petersburg, local observers said the liberal Yabloko party was set to win between five and 10 percent of the vote before election officials disqualified it on a technicality.

"All independent players in (the Kremlin's political) system must be destroyed and Yabloko is one of the those independent forces which is not controlled by the Kremlin," Mikhail Amosov, a senior Yabloko official in the city, told Reuters.

He said the Kremlin plan was to mould a new system dominated by United Russia and Fair Russia, two faithfully pro-Kremlin parties that never criticise the president.

The parties that have been disqualified from the regional votes do not have strong nationwide support in a country where most voters back Putin and his allies.

Nevertheless, their exclusion at the beginning of a vital election cycle has revived worries over whether Putin is really committed to a democratic handover of power.

"Much that will take place this December in the Duma (parliamentary) elections and in the presidential elections is taking place at the moment in St Petersburg," analyst Stanislav Belkovsky told the Ekho St Petersburg radio station.

FAIR ELECTIONS?

A spokesman for the Kremlin declined to comment on the regional elections. Putin has though, said in the past that Russian elections are free and fair.

Election officials deny any political motive and say the parties were disqualified because they failed to comply with election rules.

Yabloko's exclusion has provoked a storm of outrage in St Petersburg, Putin's hometown which is also a stronghold for the small but vocal liberal opposition.

Yabloko's problems began when the party submitted petitions showing support for its participation in the vote.

The city's election commission said the proportion of invalid signatures was over the threshold of 10 percent. An appeal was rejected.

Elsewhere, the Communist Party was denied registration in the Caucasus region of Dagestan and the Siberian region of Tyumen but managed to overturn the decisions.

The pro-business Union of Right Forces overturned a decision to bar it from elections in Samara but was refused registration in the Vologda, Pskov, Dagestan and Tyumen regions.

New, more demanding election rules adopted by the pro-Kremlin majority in Russia's parliament are part of the reason for the problems.

Parties with fewer than 50,000 members are barred and anyone wanting to take part in an election has to submit a large bond or thousands of signatures -- all rules which smaller opposition groups say discriminate against them.

Supporters of the new rules say they were needed to weed out "one-day parties" and encourage the emergence of durable political groups that will bring stability.

The victims of the new rules disagree.

"They allow the Kremlin to make a selection: who can take part in the country's political life and who can't," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, whose opposition Republican Party has been ordered to close because it does not meet the membership rules.

(Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Oleg Shchedrov and Christian Lowe in Moscow)

(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

OOO PKC Group Pskov, a Russian subsidiary of the PKC Group, was officially inaugurated on 14 February 2007 in Pskov, a city near the Estonian border.
OOO PKC Group Pskov operates in 5,600 sq m of rented factory facilities. The new factory in Pskov will meet growing demand from European customers, and will work closely with the PKC Group's Estonian factories in Keila and Haapsalu.

The companies CFO Marko Karppinen has resigned from the service of PKC Group Oyj at his own request. Karppinen shall continue at PKC Group s employ until the end of March after which he shall transfer to Proventia Group Oy. Recruiting of the PKC Group s new CFO has been started.

An elimination contest of "Live by Music!" will take place in Krasnoyarsk to draw attention of people to the struggle against HIV/AIDS. Young singers take part in the project led by "Ruki Vverkh" (Hands Up) pop group soloist Sergey Zhukov.
Young people aged between 16 and 25 are admitted for participation in the contest of songs written by themselves. Sergey Zhukov marked "the search of a singer to personify a representative of healthy youth by his or her singing" as the main objective of the contest. According to him, "All the participants will have trainings on HIV/AIDS problems to get an insight into the contest atmosphere".
Krasnoyarsk Territory AIDS Center head Lyudmila Ruzaeva said, "Towns that are participating in "The Globe" international contest" were chosen for the contest. There is Saint-Petersburg, Ulan-Ude, and Krasnoyarsk among the ones receiving medicines for HIV treatment. Lyudmila Ruzaeva noted such contests are of great importance for AIDS prevention and decreasing the epidemic growth.
The festival organizers told "Live by Music" covers ten Russian towns: Saint-Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kazan, Krasnoyarsk, Tver, Vologda, Tomsk, Pskov, Ulan-Ude, and Orenburg. The winners will compete at the semifinal in Tomsk, where they will sign along with famous Russian pop stars.
"Live by Music" winner will sing his or her song at Saint-Petersburg gala concert on March 8, 2007. The prize is a chance to record the song in Moscow professional studio and to make a music video.

RIGA, January 25 (Itar-Tass) - Latvian parliament has empowered the government to sign a border treaty with Russia without territorial claims.
The parliament approved a relevant bill in the first reading to be submitted to the foreign affairs commission for further consideration.
Under this bill the Cabinet shall sign a border treaty with Russia initialled back in 1997.
Russia and Latvia should have signed the document in Moscow on May 10, 2005. But the Latvian authorities adopted a declaration as an addendum to the treaty indirectly mentioning a long simmering dispute over the Pytalovo district in the Pskov region.
Latvia’s former Abrene district was transferred to the Soviet Union after World War II and renamed into Pytalovo.
Moscow assessed this declaration as territorial claims and refused to sign a border treaty until the declaration is revoked.
Sixty-eight parliamentarians of the 100 present supported the bill, while 24 deputies voted against. Among those who opposed the bill are members of the For Fatherland and Freedom union and New Era Party.
The document should be approved in the second and third readings and may be submitted for reconsideration to the foreign affairs commission twice. It will take from two to three months to sign this bill into law.

MOSCOW, January 20 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and India are planning to conduct joint land and naval counter-terrorism exercises in 2007, a Russian Defense Ministry official said Saturday.
INDRA-2007 is a biennial joint exercise between the armed forces of Russia and India aimed at coordinating cooperative engagement in the fight against terrorism.
"The details of the upcoming joint Russian-Indian exercise will be discussed during a visit of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to India," said Colonel General Anatoly Mazurkevich, head of the Main Directorate for Foreign Military Cooperation.
The naval part of INDRA-2007 will be held in April 2007 at the Pacific Ocean involving naval units of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the Indian Navy.
The land part of the war games is scheduled for mid-September at the training grounds of the 76th Airborne Division near the city of Pskov in north-western Russia.
"Paratroopers will practice air drops with live firing," the general said adding that the counter-terrorism exercise will involve a Russian airborne battalion and a company of Indian paratroopers.
The previous joint Russian-Indian exercise, INDRA-2005, was held in India on October 10-20, 2005. Mazurkevich also said the Russian defense minister will discuss bilateral military-technical cooperation during his visit to India on January 22-25.
The main topics of talks will include the supply of spare parts to Russian-made military equipment that was previously sold to India and the licensed production of RD-33 jet engines for MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-30MKI Flanker C fighter aircraft in service with the Indian Air Force, the general said.
According to various estimates, the Indian Air Force has up to 65 MiG-29's and 50 Su-30's.

Moscow- Russia and India are to cooperate on the development of fighter jets, the Russian defence ministry announced Saturday in advance of Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov's visit to India Monday.
An agreement over the joint development of so-called 'fifth- generation' fighter jets should be signed within months, said spokesman Colonel-General Anatoli Masurkevitch.
A joint Russian-Indian military exercise is also scheduled to take place in the north-western Russian city of Pskov, close to the Estonian border, Masurkevitch said.
Ivanov during his two-day trip to India is set to visit the city of Bangalore as well as attend political talks in New Delhi, ministry spokesman Sergei Rybakov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is also scheduled to travel to the subcontinent for Independence Day celebrations on January 26.
India and China are the two biggest customers for Russian arms exports. The Indian air force utilizes Russian-designed Su-30MK multi-role fighter bombers, manufactured under licence. In 2003 and 2005 Moscow and New Delhi collaborated on large-scale naval manoeuvres in the Indian Ocean.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

MOSCOW, January 17 (Itar-Tass) -- Mikhail Margelov, the chairman of the International Relations Committee of the Federation Council upper house of parliament, welcomes the decision of Latvian politicians to recall the declaration attached to the Treaty on the Border with Russia. “This decision should be hailed by all on both sides of the border who are interested in normal relations of the two neighbour countries,” Margelov told reporters on Wednesday.
The committee’s chairman recalled that Russia refused in May 2005 to sign the treaty because of Latvia’s claims to the city of Abrene, the way Latvia called the city of Pytalovo in Pskov Region. The Latvian leaders, Margelov said, “devised a truly Byzantine move”: Latvia advanced no claims in the treaty itself, while making a reference to the 1920 Russian-Latvian Peace Treaty in the declaration attached.
The move “has not escaped the notice of the Russian side, as it was in 1920 that the city of Abrene with six regions attached went to Latvia,” Margelov noted. “Thus the treaty and the declaration were turned into a combined document which would give the latest legal grounds for revision of the border,” he said.
The Latvian prime minister said the other day that his country renounced territorial claims to Russia, and the government coalition council on Wednesday decided to recall the “unfortunate declaration.” Welcoming this decision, the chairman of the upper house committee noted that “complexities about border delimitation and unauthorised seals and signatures” cloud bilateral relations.
He suggested that Latvia should now refer to the 1991 law On the State Status of the Latvian Republic, on whose basis Moscow recognized Riga’s independence. “The alignment of political forces in Latvia calls for compromise, and the treaty on the border in this case should observe state continuity principle.”
True, Margelov acknowledged, “It is yet early to speak about the successful advance of the coalition council’s idea, as the meeting of the Latvian saeima (parliament) is ahead. The chances of signing the treaty, however, are high, Margelov added, as, according to experts, only the TB-DNNL nationalist association is against the treaty. Margelov voiced the hope that the treaty on Russian-Latvian border would be signed.

(CJES/IFEX) - On 1 January 2007 in the city of Pskov, at about 7:00 pm (local time), an unidentified individual or individuals set fire to the door of the apartment of Irina Tikhonova, the editor-in-chief of "The Bulletin" of the news agency Pskov News Bureau. Tikhonova is convinced that the incident is directly related to her professional work.

Tikhonova informed CJES that the incident took place when her entire family was at home, which leads her to consider the act as a threat intended to instil panic and fear.

"Police and fire officials have investigated the fire and found it was caused by 'an extraneous source', confirming that it was a deliberate act of arson. Now I am seriously frightened by the incident and fear for my life and the lives of my family members," Tikhonova said.

The editor and the founder of the Pskov News Bureau suspects that Michael Kuznetsov, the governor of Pskov region, who has been criticised in the pages of "The Bulletin", is behind the attack. The newspaper is one of the few in which opposition to the regional governor has been openly expressed.

According to the editor, within the last two years the governor and his two assistants have filed 14 criminal complaints against the press through the police and the Office of the Public Prosecutor, under clause 130 (part 2) of the Russian Criminal Code (on "insult" expressed in public demonstrations or in mass media). None of these legal cases has been carried forward.

On 9 December 2006, police illegally detained Tikhonova and other staff of "The Bulletin". According to Tikhonova, despite having been shown the appropriate documents (passport, certificate of registration with "The Bulletin"), police detained them for four hours. In response to requests that they explain the reasons for the journalists' detention, police officials responded that they "can detain people for 48 hours".

The Pskov News Bureau editor believes the detention was related to the publication, on the front page of "The Bulletin", of a story that reported on governor Kuznetsov's failure to fulfil his electoral promise that the prices for energy carriers would not be raised.

The Pskov News Bureau editor also reports having been subject to pressure in relation to the upcoming 11 March elections to select representatives to the Pskov regional assembly, the Pskov municipal Duma, and to 13 other municipalities of the region.

Schoolchildren in the Pskov Region in northwest Russia found a lost traveler from France, a local education official said Friday.

Ninel Dodonova said Etienne Busiere, 17, who lives in a small village in southern France, arrived in Russia to visit his friend Nikita from St. Petersburg, whom he met on the Internet.

"The young Frenchman said he began his journey several days ago. He arrived in Warsaw by train, then came to [Estonia's capital] Tallinn and later to Pechory, a district center, and to [the ancient Russian city of] Pskov," she said.

Dodonova said Busiere decided to hitchhike to St. Petersburg without knowing his friend's exact address, but that he was unable to catch a ride.

After that, Busiere set off for St. Petersburg on foot and lost his mobile phone and identification along the way.

"Two days later, he arrived at the village of Toroshino, located 35 kilometers (21 miles) from Pskov," Dodonova said.

She said local schoolchildren found the young Frenchmen, who had not eaten for two days. He was later put on a bus and sent to the French consulate in St. Petersburg, where consular officials will issue him new documents and arrange for his return to France.

Estonia will not renounce preamble to the bill on ratification of the sea and land border treaty with Russia. As REGNUM informs, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet made such statement to Eesti Paevaleht newspaper today, on January 9. According to him, the question of the border with Russia was not subjected to any change, and no change is expected in the near future either.

In his turn, Chair of the Riigikogu (Estonian parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee Enn Eesmaa called “unusual” Moscow’s decision to withdraw its signature from the treaty. Meanwhile, Paet noted that Estonia in this situation can only remind Russia from time to time about Estonia and European Union’s position on the border treaty issue without exerting significant pressure upon the neighbor country.

At the same time, as the newspaper says, the neighboring Latvia is allegedly ready to renounce its one-sidedly introduced declaration to the Russian-Latvian border treaty, in accordance with which the Latvian side could pretend for Pytalovo District in Russia’s Pskov Region, which, in the newspaper’s opinion, can result in signing the Russia-Latvia border treaty.

The border treaties were signed by Russian and Estonian foreign ministers on May 18, 2005. While ratifying the border treaties, the Estonian parliament enclosed a preamble into the border treaty that referred to the Tartu Peace Treaty of 1920. The amendment, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, can become a ground for territorial claims to the Russian Federation.

On 15 December at 14:30 works began on setting up a major new year tree of Pskov city on Oktyabrskays square. As PIA reports, spruce was brought from Pechory district this year. It was cut close to Novy Izborsk village. And has height of 18 metres. As reported before it should be decorated before 25 December. 5 giant garlands must web all the square.

273 Pskov region schools expected to be connected to Internet before the end of the year. As PIA was reported by the Director of regional centre of information technologies Alexey Draguniv, approximately 200 educational institutions use Internet.

He also said that those schools that are impossible to connect by wire will be connected with Internet by 2 way satellite connection in 2007. "It is expensive and complicated work to make a connection but it is not less important to provide a stable work of schools in the Internet and effective resource usage given by the state", Dragunov told.

On teachers anxiety about funding stop after 3 years director answered that "in his knowledges Russian schools access to Internet will be continued to fund even after the end of the project". "It is early to talk about financing the access to Internet and educational network in three years. Let's do not guess", Dragunov concluded.

Three Pskov bridges need reconstruction experts say. As city authorities detailed these bridges are Trinity bridge, Alexander Nevsky bridge and 50th October aniversary bridge.


Svyatoslav Peedoost paid a special attention on Trinity bridge. He said that reconstruction needed for right bank pier. Asked about danger level he answered, "as a builder I can assure you that it will not fall, no need to panic but obviously the reconstruction needed". He also said that a "special man" checks piers and compares them to previous data.


Partial reconstruction is needed for Alexander Nevsky bridge also. It is made of steel so should be protected from water. This can be done with special cover needed now. The bridge of 50th October aniversary needs total reconstruction.


"All the problem as you understand is the lack of money for road repair", Peedoost explained.

Group of distributors of printed bulletin of news agency "Pskov news bureau" lead by its founder Irina Tikhonova was put into police cars and delivered to central police department without giving any explanations, as Tikhonova told to PIA.

In her words in spite of all legal papers shown cops made journalists "wait for nobody knows what" for 4 hours. None of cops called his name and for all questions about reasons of jailing replied "rudely" that if they want they will "hold them for 48 hours".

While journalists being arrested all the printed materials were seized without any proper papers and told that "if cops' conscience will awake they will give materials back in 10 days", Irina said. She told that the front of bulletin contained articles that Pskov region governor Kuznetsov did not fulfill his election promises.

After 4 hours an investigator has come and started to interrogate her. She said it looked like a simple talking. He asked "if she could fulfill election promises if became a governor", "how she thinks if governor will be offended seeing their bulletin" and so on. It started being clarified that there were no actual formal reason for holding and Irina made a decision that it is just an ordinary fact of impediment for journalist works that is prosecuted as a criminal violation by law. As Tikhonova thinks cops were engaged for this action or just helpless in juridical aspects.

So there is a case made that any journalist of Pskov region who will allow himself criticize governor may easily be thrown to jail, Irina Tikhonova concluded.

First part of orphant children rehabilitation centre was opened on 11 December in Pskov sanatorium "Cherekha". As PIA reports it is a common project of Pskov city and german charity "Pskov Initiative".

Pskov mayor Mikhail Horonen thanked all people that "helped children to find a house". Merited citizen of Pskov, director of "Pskov Initiative" Dither Bach noted that in spite his age he still has dreams about orphant and disabled children accomodation improvements.
In his greeting speech the speaker of city Duma Leonid Trifonov told when "we come to any city we are shown something good connected with children, but later on we always note that we have better".

Project coordinator Hudda Menkmeller called not ocasional the fact that this opening coincided with german pre-christmass holiday of Advent. "These last days before Chistmass are full of hapiness expectation and this exactly feeling we experience because we managed to create warm for these orphant small people", she said.

Workers of Pskov region plants estimate acting governor's policy negative. As PIA reports, meeting participants criticised him and vice-governor Maximov on 8 December rudely. "Where he puts his arms in? We like our director, our production head", one woman said. "We have our salary in time, we have a paid vacation, and we are paid if sick, we are helped to get our children educated, given a loan", she said.

"I personally did not vote for him, it's clearly seen who is he. You know, when he appeared before elections in jeans and shirt as average and simple man he wanted to show that he has no bodyguards. So why does not he come out now?", she outraged.

While meeting workers expressed their negative estimation of economy policy of Pskov governor. "The only two palnts left - ours and "Avar", all the rest are just light industry. Only islands left after all former power. You want to kill last two plants and turn everything into trade, sell and buy!", one worker shouted out. In his opinion Velikie Luki will overgrow Pskov in industrial development soon. (Velikie Luki is the second biggest city in Pskov region).

Project of pest burial in Palkino district was financed by Danes and Russians, as an official web-site of State Committee of Pskov region for licensing and natural resources usage says. Approximately 80 pest storages from all around Pskov region were gathered in Palkino district.

Utilisation works are now stopped until the resolution of state ecology expertise. On 9 November Pskov city court obliged regional administration to present all necessary documentation to Rostehnadzor.

First class pests such as Agronal and Granozan that are actually organic mercury compounds collected at Lesnoe village of Cherskaya volost. Usage of Granozan is prohibited in Russia more than 30 years ago because of high toxic. Other pests were not identified. According to instructions each preparation or chemical compound should had been put in separate container. On 27 December 2005 a fire happened at the burial. Specialists suggest 5 reasons of fire. One of them is chemical self ignition.

Experts suspect that there were not proper works done on degasation at the burial and surrounding area.

More than 300 workers of "Pskovcabel" plant gathered at Pskov region administration building they request to protect their rights and justice, PIA reports.
Director of the plant Viktor Kukushkin also participates meeting.
Workers were shouting out "Kuznetsov come out!" (Kuznetsov is the surname of Pskov region governor), "Hands off the plant!", "Never let close the plant!", "Maximov come out!" (Maximov is the surname of Pskov region vice-governor). They were also holding banners "Putin help!", "Put Kuznetsov's gang to Court!", "No illegal actions!", "Protect the plant!", "No unemployment!", "Save our families of hunger!", "Put governor to jail!".
No power authorities' representative came out to meet workers. One worker tried to come into building to negotiate but police did not let him in. Decision about meeting against plant stop was supported by the majority of workers. On 7 December workers asked President Putin not to let close the plant. Their open letter was signed by more than 400 people. "We address to You with a great ask: help us to protect one of the best enterprises in Pskov region, stop this illegal actions, don't let them make us loosing our job", letter says. This letter was also sent to Duma Chairman Boris Grizlov, Federation Soviet Sergey Mironov, Government Chairman Mikhail Fradkov, Prosecutor General Ury Chaika and others.

See photos from the spot here - http://gallery.informpskov.ru/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=2969

Another article mentioned Pskov due to massive alcohol poisoning.
Here is the quote:
"In some regions - Pskov, Irkutsk and Voronezh, for example - the situation was described as critical. The consumption of counterfeit alcohol was bringing epidemics of hepatitis in its wake."
Written by Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, see full text published here by openDemocracy.net.

For 11 months of 2006 Pskov region custom offices transferred to federal budget 5 329 022 000 rubles. As press-secretary of Pskov custom Natalya Knyazeva told to PIA, plan is fulfilled for 106%, and it is the first time when 5 billion rate is exceeded.

15861000 of cargo units are passed through international custom terminals - that are more than 1392000 individial entrepreneurs and more than 764000 cargo vehicles. Amount of cargo trucks grew on 22% in comparison to the same period last year.

Custom border was crossed by more than 532000 freight cars and 287 planes.

International trade turnover for 11 months made up 1136085000 US dollars (on 88% more than the same period last year). Import is 451093000 $, export is 684092000 $, that are 219% and 172% of last year rates properly.

Pskov was mentioned in the article "On Wine: Vodka getting to be a risky way to toast" by Jennifer Rosen due to massive alcohol poisoning.

Here is the cut:
"Drinkers have been collapsing with liver damage from Pskov in the northwest to Irkutsk in Siberia, where patients are being turned away from hospitals with full beds."

See full text here. Published in Rocky Mountain News.

Very high temperatures observed in Pskov region which are 9-10 degrees higher than normal for beginning of December. As it was reported to PIA in Pskov regional meteorology centre, for last 16 years the first 5 days of December experience positive temperatures.

Absolut December maximum was fixed in 1953 - it was 9-10 degrees above zero. "We afraid that this maximum can be overcome this month", experts said.

They also added that November temperatures were also higher but only on 2 degrees. Absolut maximum for November was fixed in 1968 when termometer showed 14-16 above zero.

Regional office of Federal migration service in Pskov will be hiring citizens to work in Germany. As it was told to PIA there are vacancies for cookers, waiters, McDonalds workers, tractor drivers, parlormaids, agronoms and other specialists.

Candidates should be Russian cictizens occupied with these specialities, of age 18-40, have diploma of education, work experience not less than 2 years and speak German fluently. Along with papers there must be a contract with foreign employer submitted.

Pskov writers has disseminated among media their claim of uniting into Pskov regional writing organisation of Russia writers union. As it was told to PIA by Board member, this decision was made on 20 November. Before it there were 2 organisations - Pskov regional writing organisation and Association of Pskov writers. There are 36 professional writers are now in this artistic union lead by Igor Smolkin.

As writers think their unification will help to solve financial, social and creative problems. "Not only writers will benefit of it, but readers and all the regional culture in whole", was said in the organisation.

Literators' unions let better to keep best traditions collected in native literature and also "to give professional and tangible help to beginners, to solve moral and patriotic education issues that society and state need so much", sources in the Board said.

New organisation has plans to expand collaboration with power authorities, NGOs, to search new modern ways to communicate with readers, to spend creative hearings, literature holidays, to publish new books and to support artistic youth.

Due to massive poisoning with illegal spirit in Pskov region alcoholics started to buy home-brewed alcohol. As police authority major Dmitry Zhukov told to PIA, not only consumers are frightened to death but sellers too. Nowadays there are almost no illegal spirit seized.

On 1 December there were 3591 litres of spirit containing liquid seized, most of it occured to be wash. On 3 December 630 litres of wash were also seized in Pskov city.

"Home-brew effect is the same as of spirit although it is only 30-35% strong. Sellers add drowsy tablets into it to reach the effect", Zhukov added.

This costs more. A bottle of illegal spirit costs 15-20 rubles, a bottle of home-brew is 30-50 rubles. "Yet it's production is more expensive process. But stillthere are some cases of mixture home-brew with spirit again", major concluded.

Famous writer had visited Pskov region and here is the part of his thought published in TimesOnline. Reproduced partly, see full text here.

Russia's icy heart


PSKOV
In the small patch of ground behind a church, three women have been planting seeds. One of them begins making the sign of the cross many times, slowly turning around in a circle. The two other women touch their lips and pray. Praying for the seed to flourish in this stubborn soil. The church was in the middle of a yard of semi-derelict two-storey houses, erected at the beginning of the previous century. Two old men, without shirts, sat in opposite parts of the yard. A young couple sat on the steps leading to one of the houses, a transistor radio blaring beside them. Dogs lay in the dust. Two or three people sat by their windows, gazing down at the scene.
I suspect that it was always like this — dirty, shabby, unkempt. It would have been shabby before the Revolution and after the Revolution. It would have been unkempt during the Soviet period, just as it is now. The nature of a terrain does not change very much. Then two young girls come out and begin to blow soap bubbles. They have been to the baptism of a three-year-old child, held in this church before us. The ceremony had lasted three hours. One girl tells us that the young boy had cried when the water touched his head. No, her companion interrupts, he cried when the oil was put on his legs. Baptism and soap bubbles somehow go together.
A drive out of Pskov takes us to the great Pechory monastery. There is a vista of churches and towers on a hillside, the blue domes and golden domes and silver domes like clouds of stars. We are greeted by the sound of bells, growling bells, menacing bells, yearning bells. The female servants of the monastery reverently sweep every inch of the steps leading to the principal church. The monks look very dirty, but no doubt they are just untidy. Perhaps they consider themselves as nothing before the infinite sweetness of God. And is it possible that some people consider themselves as nothing before the infinite benevolence of the State?
This monastery was also a fortress and a centre of power; as an object of pilgrimage, it still retains some of that power. There are two small shelters where water is pumped from sacred wells — holy water, water of faith. The religion here is a real and enthralling culture.
On the way back to Pskov from Pechory, two small children are waiting by the side of the road for a lift. The little girl, Macha, is accompanied by her brother Zhenya; they are five or six years old. They live six kilometres away. What are you doing by the side of the road? Our mother sent us to the shop, to see if they would give us bread. But they would not give it to us without money. Why does your mother not wash you or clean your clothes? There is no soap in the house. The small boy spoke with great determination — almost defiantly.
Perhaps the size of the country, the extent of the land, breeds a sense of resignation and of hopelessness. Perhaps it is just the “character” of the Russian country people. Smaller places, such as England, encourage practicality and common sense and moderation. These do not seem to be in the Russian character. But it is not so hopeless, after all. The vast spaces inspire expectancy and ardour and idealism. But they can also engender bewilderment and confusion and black humour. There is comedy, for example, in the fact that the traffic police lurk behind bushes in order to catch speeding cars. It may also be comic that they prefer bribes to issuing tickets. The police are paid very low salaries.