In a rare reversal, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has backed down on his opposition to halting the construction of an $8 billion highway through a centuries-old oak forest north of Moscow — even as loggers said they already cut down almost half of the trees in question.

Putin said he was open to an alternative route Friday, a day after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to the deforestation needed to make way for the highway from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

“The question about what route the road will take is an important one,” Putin told reporters during a tour of the Far East, according to a transcript on the government’s web site.

But he also said the highway was a “necessary” project.

Meanwhile, Teplotekhnik, the contractor hired to clear the forest, said it had cut down about 60 hectares of the 144 hectares scheduled for destruction, Vedomosti reported Friday.

Putin and Medvedev made no public comment about Teplotekhnik’s announcement by Sunday.

Yevgenia Chirikova, leader of the Khimki forest defenders, told The Moscow Times that restoring the destroyed trees would take more than 70 years.

Putin’s government previously supported the partial destruction of the forest. But speaking to reporters Friday, Putin stressed that this was not the first time that he had changed previously approved construction plans because of environmental concerns.

Russian journalist Mikhail Beketov, the founder of Khimkinskaya Pravda, was brutally assaulted in 2008 sustaining injuries which have left him brain damaged and in a wheelchair and have caused him to have one leg and three fingers amputated for editorializing opposition to the Khimki roadway.

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The lawyer acting for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout submitted a petition to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Monday against the extradition of his client to the United States.

Lak Nitiwattanawichan requested better protection for Mr Bout and also that the government abide by the laws pertaining to extradition.

The unfair extradition of Mr Bout could be detrimental to his life and his freedom, he said, and asked to meet Mr Abhisit in person to discuss the matter.

An official at Government House received the petition.

Mr Lak said the meeting of Sirichoke Sopha, a Democrat MP for Songkhla and a close aide of Mr Abhisit, with Mr Bout,  would not affect the extradition case.

The 11-page petition was written by Mr Lak and was signed by Mr Bout.

Mr Abhisit said later he had asked the agencies involved to increase security for Mr Bout, because the case is the centre of a conflict.

He said he had not received the petition and would have to see it first before deciding whether to allow Mr Lak to meet him to discuss the matter.

In the morning, Sirichoke Sopha, a Democrat Party MP and close aide to Mr Abhisit, insisted his controversial meeting with the Russian arms dealer would not damage Thailand’s relations with Russia and the United States.

“I met Mr Bout because I needed some facts and I was doing my duty as an MP. The meeting will not affect Mr Bout’s court case,” Mr Sirichoke said.

He had not discussed this matter with Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, but believed Mr Suthep was well aware of the situation.

Read more here.

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The devastating wildfires have shown severe shortcomings in Russia’s firefighting organization, deficits that are all the more bizarre because until recently the country possessed one of the world’s biggest task forces specialized in combating burning woods and fields.

That organization, the Aerial Forest Protection Center, or Avialesokhrana, employed some 9,000 firefighters specially trained and equipped to put out wildfires in Soviet times.

Most of them were so-called smokejumpers, who fly and parachute right into remote fire-hit areas.

In the 1990s, their number was slashed to about 4,000, and in 2007, the center was reduced to the status of a monitoring agency, with just 1,800 personnel left at its disposal.

This summer’s catastrophic fires have shown that the reform was a failure and the best way out is to re-establish a unified wildfire fighting center, Andrei Yeritsov, deputy director of the Aerial Forest Protection Center, said Wednesday.

“It would be good if the responsibility for putting out fires were handed back to the federal level,” Yeritsov told The Moscow Times.

The reform was part of the new Forest Code, which came into effect on Jan. 1, 2007.

The code, which has been lambasted by environmentalists as the result of timber and real estate industry lobbying, transferred responsibility for the country’s vast woodlands to local owners and regional authorities, effectively crippling the woodland fire control system.

The case of the Aerial Forest Protection Center highlights environmentalists’ argument.

With the reform, most of the center’s resources went into the hands of the country’s regions, which seriously impeded effective firefighting activities, Yeritsov said.

Much of the center’s staff and equipment ended up in the regions where they happened to be based, leading to massive misallocations, he said.

As an example, he named the center’s once formidable fleet of firefighting planes and helicopters. All 106 aircraft, mainly consisting of An-2 biplanes, were given to the regions, where just half of them are now being used for firefighting.

The Vladimir region, east of Moscow, got 16 planes, although it needed only one, meaning that the aircraft sit mostly on the ground or are used for other, commercial purposes.

“This is absurd,” Yeritsov said.

Read more here.

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An ongoing tussle over the Khimki forest is raising fears that media freedoms are in jeopardy, with the police pressuring journalists into collaborating or revealing their sources of information, media freedom activists said Monday.

In the most recent incident, investigators on Monday removed Alexander Litoi, a reporter for the liberal Novaya Gazeta daily, from a train in the Moscow region to question him about a July 28 attack on the Khimki City Hall building.

The City Hall building was pelted with stones and smoke grenades by 90 to 300 attackers who protested what they called unlawful destruction of the Khimki forest, slated for a partial demolition to make way for an $8 billion highway despite protests from environmentalists.

Litoi said the police wanted him to disclose information about members of an anti-fascist movement that took responsibility for the City Hall attack, Ekho Moskvy radio reported. He said he was not present during the attack.

Last week, police officers visited the offices of several newspapers, including Kommersant, asking staff for information about the attack.

The requests amount to an attempt to disclose journalists’ sources, which can only be revealed on court orders — something that investigators did not obtain, said Andrei Rikhter, a media professor at Moscow State University’s school of journalism.

Police investigators have also visited the headquarters of the Svobodnya Pressa online daily, asking for photos of the City Hall attackers.

Several reporters from Komsomolskaya Pravda and Moskovsky Komsomolets have been summoned for questioning, and police officers have also visited the home of the Gazeta.ru reporter Grigory Tumanov.

“These are attempts to discredit reporters,” Rikhter said, adding that the law does not offer the media sufficient protection from police abuse.

“The media law doesn’t ban [police] from conducting searches in offices of media outlets and summoning reporters for questioning,” he said.

Moscow and Moscow region police spokespeople provided no comment on the media freedom allegations Monday. A Khimki police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Moscow Times that police were only acting on request of civil authorities in the case. He did not elaborate.

The relatively independent print media has become a source of irritation for the authorities after television, the No. 1 source of news for most of the population, was placed under firm state control in the early 2000s, said Boris Timoshenko, a researcher at the Glasnost Defense Foundation.

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A dense smog shrouded Moscow on Friday, grounding flights at the city’s international airports, seeping into homes and offices and stinging the eyes of residents as wildfires raged to the east and south.

Dozens of incoming flights were diverted from the capital’s Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports, as the smog from the blazes around the capital brought runway visibility down to 200 meters, airport officials told The Associated Press.

All incoming flights to Moscow were being offered alternative airports at which to land, but the decision to divert was up to individual flight crews, Domodedovo spokeswoman Yelena Galanova said. Moscow’s other main airport, located on the side of the city opposite most of the blazes, freed up tarmac space to receive some planes. Other flights diverted to St. Petersburg and to Kazan, a city 800 kilometers east of Moscow, said Irina Ivanova, a Vnukovo Airport spokeswoman.

Visibility in parts of the capital was down to a few dozen meters because of the smog caused by the fires, which carries a strong burning smell. Airborne pollutants such as carbon monoxide were four times higher than average readings ― the worst seen to date in the Russian capital during the ongoing heat wave.

Kremlin spires and church domes disappeared into the dirty mist, which is forecast to hang in the air for days because of a lack of wind.

“It hurts my eyes,” student Valeriya Kuleva said on a street in central Moscow. “I’m wearing a mask, but nothing helps.”

“It’s just impossible to work,” said Moscow resident Mikhail Borodin, in his late 20s, as he removed a mask to puff on a cigarette. “I don’t know what the government is doing, they should just cancel office hours.”

More than 500 separate blazes were burning nationwide Friday, mainly in western Russia, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. Dozens of forest and peat bog fires around Moscow have ignited amid the country’s most intense heat wave in 130 years of recordkeeping.

“All high-temperature records have been beaten, never has this country seen anything like this, and we simply have no experience of working in such conditions,” Moscow emergency official Yury Besedin said Friday.

He added that 31 forest fires and 15 peat-bog fires were burning in the Moscow region alone.

Read more here.

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The government has for the first time managed to stabilize the size of the population, which is why all the forecasts about Russia’s extinction are unfounded and must be reviewed. This announcement was made by Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Zhukov. However, the forecasts, made by Western analysts and Rosstat (Federal State Statistics Service), indicate a population decline in the next 10-20 years. The demographics argument is that economic growth is impossible with a declining population, and a reduced number of workers destabilizes the retirement system. The situation could only be offset by high immigration.

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During last Thursday’s meeting of the Council on Priority Projects, Zhukov said that “in all the years of implementation of national priority projects, the birth rate has increased by 21%, the death rate decreased by almost 12%, and life expectancy rate rose to 69 years. For the first time ever, we have managed to stabilize the size of the population.”

Meanwhile, he referred to the forecasts of American analysts, who argued that the size of the Russian population will be reduced in the coming years, as “absolutely unfounded.”

Recall that, according to the latest report of the American research organization Population Reference Bureau, Russia’s population is expected to decline drastically. If today the number of Russians is approximately 142 million people, then by 2025 it is expected that it will be reduced to 133 million, and by 2050 to 117 million people.

Zhukov promises to “stabilize and gradually increase the population.” As proof, he cited the following encouraging statistics: “A 16.2% death rate decline by 2013 in comparison to 2009, a 9.5% increase in birth rate, and increased life expectancy by 2.3 years, to 71.3 years.”

However, experts say that there isn’t a single country in all of human history that developed at an annual rate of 7% for more than 15 consecutive years with only a 1% annual decline in thr employable population. Yet according to the existing predictive estimates, that is exactly what will be happening in Russia until 2020. It is incredibly difficult to perform the optimistic economic scenario in such an unfavorable demographic situation.

Read more here.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he has sung Soviet-era patriotic songs with the 10 spies deported from the United States and knows the identities of those who betrayed them.

Putin described his meeting with the spies during a trip to Ukraine, where he also rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and sought to bolster Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Putin did not say when or where he met with the 10 spies, who arrived in Moscow on July 9 and most recently were reportedly being debriefed at a Foreign Intelligence Service building in Moscow’s outskirts.

“I met with them. We talked about life,” Putin told reporters Saturday at the Crimean resort of Foros, according to a transcript published on the prime minister’s web site.

“They will find decent work — I’m sure. I don’t doubt that they will have interesting, bright lives,” said Putin, who served as a KGB agent in East Germany in the 1980s and led the Federal Security Service in the late 1990s.

He said he had joined them in singing several songs, including “With What the Motherland Begins?” from the 1968 Soviet movie “The Shield and the Sword” about an undercover Russian spy in Nazi Germany.

“I’m not joking, seriously. And other songs with similar content,” Putin said, adding that the songs were sung to live music, not karaoke.

The prime minister confirmed that Anna Chapman, the most well-known female spy from the group who married a British man and later divorced, also attended the meeting.

Putin said a betrayal had sparked the spy scandal and promised tough times for the traitors, whose names he said are known.

“Traitors always end badly. As a rule, they end up in the gutter as drunks or drug addicts,” he said.

When asked whether the state was planning to take revenge on the traitors, Putin said, “The special services live under their own laws, and everyone knows what these laws are.”

U.S. officials have not said how they learned about the 10 spies, who pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to being agents for the Russian government while living as “illegals” — deep-cover spies who pose as ordinary people without the immunity offered by diplomatic passports. Many of the Russians adopted fake names and lived in suburban America for years, buying homes and raising families as they sought to glean information and make recruits in U.S. government policy-making circles.

Read more here.

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About 2,000 residents of a small town near Sochi rallied against environmental pollution Sunday evening despite colossal efforts to prevent the gathering after a previous protest drew 4,000 and left the top local official without a job.

The protesters gathered on the periphery of the central square of Tuapse, a Black Sea town of 60,000 popular with tourists, ignoring rain and the campaign to prevent the rally, which included closing the square for construction, distributing flyers with false information, closing down the town’s web site, and printing a special issue of a local newspaper with appeals not to attend, residents said.

“It’s the height of the summer season, and no person in their right mind would make a decision to do construction work now on the central square when Tuapse is filled with tourists,” said Anna Tesheva, an activist involved with the protest.

The events in Tuapse illustrate the lengths that local authorities are willing to go to prevent any sign of unrest after President Dmitry Medvedev last year threatened to fire lax governors following the Pikalyovo protests that shut down a major highway and forced Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to intercede.

Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachyov visited Tuapse after the last rally in May brought 4,000 people to the same square to protest poor environmental conditions and demand a referendum on a fertilizer terminal being built by EuroChem for a grand opening this year.

Residents say a test loading of fertilizer by EuroChem polluted the atmosphere, and they are not mollified by company denials of wrongdoing.

Rally participants also called for the dismissal of local officials and a ban on the construction of new dangerous facilities in the town’s center.

Read more here.

As international special interest groups are vying for influence in the US government, the line between espionage and lobbying work is becoming dangerously vague.

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The US Justice Department announced on Monday that 10 individuals were arrested on charges of working as “agents of a foreign government [i.e. Russia] without notifying the US attorney general,” a crime that carries a penalty of a maximum of five years in prison. Nine of the arrested individuals were also charged with money laundering.

Made to resemble some sort of powerful storm front blowing in from the east, US media reported that the arrested individuals worked in “deep cover” in Boston, Montclair, New York and Arlington. An 11th suspect has been detained by Interpol in Cyprus and released on bail.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says that it has been collecting extensive electronic surveillance of the suspects “for years,” yet, as CNN reported, the arrested individuals “were not directly involved in obtaining US secrets themselves.”

The obvious question is: what exactly did these individuals do to attract the attention of the US intelligence community?

One of the suspects is Vicky Pelaez, who has been a columnist for the Spanish-language “El Dario” newspaper for more than 20 years. Pelaez has covered a wide range of touchy topics, ranging from local and international politics to immigration issues.

Since one of the primary functions of a political reporter is to make connections and ask penetrating questions, was Pelaez singled out for suspicion by simply trying to do her job? After all, “infiltrating policy-making circles” is exactly what people in the journalistic and lobbying community do in order to fulfill the requirements of their respective jobs.

It is also the work of reporters and lobbyists to “learn about US weapons, diplomatic strategy and politics.” But simply asking questions about such subjects does not automatically make a person a spy. At least it should not.

Another one of the arrested individuals, Anna Chapman, was said to have “met with an individual purporting to be a Russian Government official in Manhattan, New York, at which she received a fraudulent passport,” according to the official criminal report.

Chapman, however, immediately went to the local police and gave them the passport.

CNN reported that Chapman never “fulfilled the mission” of delivering the fraudulent passport that the undercover FBI agent gave to her.

“She met an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian who set up an urgent meeting asking her to deliver a passport,” reported Deborah Feyerick, a commentator with CNN. “This was her first person-to-person mission, but it [the passport delivery] never happened.”

Chapman was also arrested for apparently using her laptop computer inside of a New York City coffee shop at the same time that a Russian Government official was driving by in a minivan.

Moscow has already called the charges “contradictory,” and is demanding more information on the criminal proceedings from their US counterparts.

Read more here.

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Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko has ordered the government halt the transit of Russian gas to Europe until Gazprom pays off its existing debt for gas transit.

The European Commission will gather with Russian and Belarusian representatives for an urgent session on Tuesday, EU energy spokeswoman Marlene Holzner said.

More than six percent of EU gas consumption could be at risk because of the row between Russia and its neighbor Belarus, she underlined.

Speaking about President Lukashenko’s order to cut transit gas flow to European customers, Holzner said, they received no official information on the matter.

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has already given all the necessary orders to Gazprom’s management regarding Belarus’ actions.

Lukashenko made the announcement at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Gazprom’s debt to Belarus for gas transit to Europe was created artificially because Belarus has not signed the gas transit act, Gazprom spokesman Sergey Kupriyanov said on Monday.

“Yes, there is a debt. Belarus is not signing a document about completed work and this prevents us from paying off this debt,” Kupriyanov admitted, adding that the debt itself is about $192 million.

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