Russian News From Russia

A wolf in sheep’s clothing – that’s how ACTA opponents have described the international copyright treaty. Thousands are to protest in Sweden on Saturday while in Poland the legislation has been suspended after attacks on government websites.

­Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday that a wider discussion should be held before the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement comes into force. The talks should involve both Internet users and privacy protection agencies, Tusk added. Ratification of the document has been postponed pending the results of those talks.

Meanwhile in Sweden, thousands of Internet users are expected to take to the streets of several major cities on Saturday. Over 11,000 have signed up to attend the rallies on a Facebook page promoted by the “hacktivist” group, Anonymous.

Reports say similar demonstrations are set to take place in other countries across Europe, including the UK, France, Germany, Poland and other countries.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement involving a number of countries including the US, Australia and Japan, as well as the European Union. The UK and 21 other EU member states signed the agreement on January 26. It now has to be ratified by the European Parliament and is scheduled to be debated in June.

The treaty aims at establishing a legal framework to stop the cross-border trade in counterfeit goods. However many, including insiders, say the document jeopardizes Internet freedoms. The former European Parliament rapporteur for ACTA, Kader Arif, resigned his post last Friday after the treaty was signed by the EU, condemning the whole process leading to the signature of the agreement.

He later told the Guardian that the treaty threatens online freedom and could mean that someone crossing a border with a laptop containing a single song or movie potentially facing criminal charges.

“The title of this agreement is misleading, because it is not only about counterfeiting, it is about the violation of intellectual property rights,” Kader Arif told the Guardian. “There is a major difference between these two concepts.”

ACTA, which is often compared to America’s controversial SOPA and PIPA bills, has led to major protests in several European states. In solidarity with the movement, the online activist collective Anonymous has launched a series of Internet attacks.

Hundreds are reported dead after a major military offensive on the western Syrian city of Homs overnight. While the country’s opposition blames Bashar al-Assad for the assault, the regime claims the reports are provocations.

Reports say at least 200 perished in the attack on the Syrian city of Homs, which started late on Friday. Eyewitnesses say attackers used tanks, mortars and machine guns, Al Jazeera reports.

The opposition claims it was the Syrian regular army that caused the bloodbath.  Assad’s regime denies attacking Homs and maintains the reports are untrue and aimed at putting pressure on the UN Security Council, which is expected to vote on a resolution on Saturday. The regime accused TV stations broadcasting images of Homs and dead bodies of “inciting violence.”

“The civilians shown by satellite television stations are citizens who were kidnapped and killed by armed gunmen,” state agency SANA said.

Protesters stormed Syrian embassies in Cairo, Kuwait and London on Saturday, AFP reports. The opposition Syrian National Council called on the world community to take action, saying Assad’s regime had “committed one of the most horrific massacres since the beginning of the uprising in Syria.”

The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the resolution on Syria on Saturday, AP quoted an unnamed diplomat in the Council as saying. The move to a vote follows a conversation between Hillary Clinton and the Russian Foreign Minister on Friday, the agency reports.

However news of the vote, which emerged overnight, came as a surprise to Russia.

Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov had said on Friday that Russia was not fully satisfied with the current draft of the resolution and pledged to continue talks.

Sergey Lavrov said on Saturday that any attempt by the US to push for the UNSC to vote today would be “just another scandal.”

Mia Wasikowska – best known as Alice in Wonderland - is set to plunge into the murky world of Fyodor Dostoevsky, the creator of Crime and Punishment. Her next role will be in The Double, a dark drama based on a short story by the Russian author.

­Her partner on screen will be The Social Network star Jesse Eisneberg, who portrays a man whose life turns into a nightmare after he shows up to the office to discover a facsimile of himself waiting for him.

Yakov Golyadkin’s double is out to destroy his name, identity, and indeed his whole world, threatening his reputation in the realm of Russian bureaucracy.

Dostoevsky’s story is awash with searingly realistic descriptions of mental decay and the character’s schizophrenic agony.

Konstantin Stanislavsky’s famous student Mikhail Chekhov warned actors against getting too close to their characters, in case authenticity should lead to madness.

The Double’s British director, Richard Ayoade, whose debut feature Submarine received critical acclaim, described Dostoevsky’s masterpiece as “a sort of doppelganger tale, and funny.” He told the Guardian that “Dostoevsky never finished The Double to his satisfaction. We’re going to dust that off. We’ll do what Fyodor couldn’t,” Ayoade promised.

It’s not the first time The Double has been adapted for the screen. Back in 1968, Italian cinema giant Bernardo Bertolucci released his own version of Dostoevsky’s drama, entitled Partner.

An opposition rally in Moscow gathered 33,000 participants, while a pro-government event elsewhere in the city was attended by 150,000, city police said at 2 p.m. Saturday.

However, organizers of the anti-Putin rally say over a 160,000 attended. Participants gathered at Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad for a 1.5-kilometer march to Bolotnaya Ploshchad to protest alleged electoral violations and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s expected return to presidency.

LIVE: Opposition rally on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow

Live video feed from Bolotnaya Ploshchad indicated attendance could have been considerably higher than police estimates, which were considerably lower than those of organizers and independent observers during two previous opposition rallies in December.

Among the crowd are presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov and former finance minister and Putin’s longtime friend Alexei Kudrin. Both said earlier they do not plan to speak at the rally.

A rally in support of Putin is taking place on Poklonnaya Gora. Numerous media and blog reports said many of its participants were state employees who were forced to attend, though authorities denied all these allegations.

LIVE: Pro-Putin rally on Poklonnaya Gora

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Gazprom should take great effort to ensure natural gas exports to Europe, which is experiencing an extremely cold snap.

Faced with severe weather conditions, some EU states complained earlier this week that they are receiving less gas from Russia that expected, however, Gazprom, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s gas imports, said it is delivering as much gas as it can under current contracts.

“I am asking you to make a real effort to supply the demands of our foreign partners given that the top priority of our energy companies, including Gazprom, is to supply Russian customers,” Putin said at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin and Gazprom Deputy Chairmen, Alexander Medvedev and Andrei Kruglov.

Kruglov told the premier that Gazprom could not increase gas deliveries to Europe, which is hit by record low temperatures.

According to European Commission spokeswoman Marlene Holzner, Russia reduced gas deliveries to nine European countries as of Wednesday and EU states have imported gas from other suppliers and use stored volume.

Putin said this proves the importance and relevance of the South Stream and Nord Stream pipelines.

“Today, we should recall those who were preventing us from building the Nord Stream pipeline. But for them, the second leg [of the pipeline] would have already been put into operation,” Putin said.

MOSCOW, February 4 (RIA Novosti) – Speakers at the pro-government rally in Moscow on Saturday lambasted the opposition, which held a parallel protest event elsewhere in the city, for plotting a revolution in the interests of Western powers.

“We say no to the destruction of Russia. We say no to Orange arrogance. We say no to the American government…let’s take out the Orange trash,” political analyst Sergei Kurginyan said at the rally by Moscow’s Poklonnaya Gora memorial, which he co-organized.

Police said between 90,000 and to 160,000 attended the event in support of Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin, compared to 35,000 at the opposition rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad, whose organizers estimated attendance at 100,000.

Speakers at Poklonnaya Gora said their opponents intend to overthrow Putin through public protests, like during Ukraine’s “Orange revolution” in 2004. They also insist protesters at Bolotnaya Ploshchad are acting in the interest of the United States, whose ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, met with rally organizers in January.

Participants of the two rallies “have nothing to discuss with each other,” political analyst Nikolai Starikov said at the rally.

Writer Eduard Bagirov, a member of Putin’s campaign staff, denounced participants of the rival rally as “good-for-nothing slackers” and told the attendants that Putin passed his greetings.

Putin and other senior officials also warned about a foreign influence in Russian protests and cautioned against a possible revolution, though also conceded the protests were peaceful and mostly driven by grassroots activism.

The rally lasted slightly over an hour and wrapped up shortly after 2 p.m. without incidents. Police said the organizers would be fined for exceeding the officially sanctioned attendance limit of 15,000.

Media and bloggers reported many of those who came to Poklonnaya Gora were state employees forced to attend but organizers and authorities denied the accusations.

Over a hundred thousand people braved the bitter cold at two major rallies in downtown Moscow on Saturday as a power play between champions of political liberalization and supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin continues to unfold.

LIVE: Opposition rally on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow

The first demonstration demanded fair elections at the March 4 presidential polls, at which Putin is expected to secure a third term in the Kremlin. It also calls on Russians “not to give a single vote” to Putin.

The opposition rally is widely seen by analysts as a litmus test of protesters’ ability to maintain momentum after two earlier protests against alleged vote fraud in favor of Putin’s United Russia party at December’s parliamentary polls.

“We are prepared for a long tough struggle,” protest organizer and opposition figure Boris Nemtsov on the eve of the rally. “One peaceful march will not change the country.”

Around 30,000 have signed up on social networks to attend the demonstration. The protests included a march through downtown Moscow and a rally across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. The two previous rallies drew an estimated combined total of 100,000 people.

Protesters were set to gather by the downtown Oktyabrskaya station starting 12 p.m. local time, when temperature in Moscow stood at minus 22 degrees Celsius.

A variety of political groups gathered for the rally: participants carried flags of the liberal Yabloko Party, of the unregistered liberal Party of People’s Freedom, red Communist flags, as well as anarchist and Russian nationalist banners. Many held white balloons and ribbons of the Voters League.

Protesters carried posters and banners with demands ranging from rather general “Russia will be free!” and “We do care!” to blatantly anti-Putin “Not a single vote for Putin!” and “Putin, go away!

Many protesters chanted “Russia without Putin!”

Boris Akunin, a founding father of the Voters League, told RIA Novosti while marching that people came to demand fair elections, division of powers and the democratization of political life in Russia.

“It is important that so many people came here,” he stressed. Leaders of the opposition were worried that a poor showing at the rally and the march would mean that the momentum of the protests had been exhausted, putting an end to hopes of pressing the government to pursue reforms.

Putin’s supporters at their own rally chanted “There are more of us!” Hundreds of tri-color Russian flags fluttered above the huge crowd and many participants carried posters, saying “Muscovites for Putin!”, “No to Orangists!” and “Russia forever!”

President Dmitry Medvedev, widely seen as Putin’s junior partner in Russia’s ruling tandem, proposed a host of political reforms after the initial vote protests, including the return of direct elections for regional governors and easier registration for political parties and presidential candidates. His proposals were dismissed by protest leaders on Friday as “imitation reforms.”

Putin has also ordered the installation of video cameras at polling stations and has encouraged independent monitors to oversee the presidential vote.

The organization of Saturday’s march has seen the involvement of the Voters League, a freshly-minted public group that claims no involvement in politics and is led by popular figures such as novelist Boris Akunin, TV journalist Leonid Parfyonov and rock musician Yury Shevchuk.

A separate rally, earlier expected to draw some 15,000 people, urged protesters to resist what organizers say are attempts to instigate an Orange Revolution in Russia. So-called Color uprisings took place in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia in the early 2000s after contested presidential elections.

Putin thanked late on Friday those people who planned to attend the rally in his support.

“I share their views,” he said.

There have been numerous reports in the Russian media of state employees being coerced to attend the Anti-Orange rally, but the authorities have said these are untrue or the actions of over-zealous, low-level officials.

Both demonstrations have been authorized by City Hall. Moscow police say they will deploy 9,000 officers to maintain order at the rallies.

Rallies by both the opposition and Putin’s supporters took place in cities across Siberia and the Far East, most of them gathering several hundreds of protesters. An opposition rally in Novosibirsk was attended by an 1,500 to 2,000 people, according to police estimates, while a pro-Putin indoors rally in far eastern Birobidzhan had 600 participants, organizers said.

An opposition rally in Moscow gathered 33,000 participants, while a pro-government event elsewhere in the city was attended by 150,000, city police said at 2 p.m. Saturday.

However, organizers of the anti-Putin rally say over a 160,000 attended. Participants gathered at Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad for a 1.5-kilometer march to Bolotnaya Ploshchad to protest alleged electoral violations and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s expected return to presidency.

Live video feed from Bolotnaya Ploshchad indicated attendance could have been considerably higher than police estimates, which were considerably lower than those of organizers and independent observers during two previous opposition rallies in December.

Among the crowd are presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov and former finance minister and Putin’s longtime friend Alexei Kudrin. Both said earlier they do not plan to speak at the rally.

Maria Sharapova will be looking to fire Russia in their Fed Cup World Group opener against Spain this weekend as she returns to freezing Moscow after her run in the sun to the Australian Open final.

Russian captain Shamil Tarpischev was spoilt for choice for the tie on the indoor hard surface of Moscow’s Olympic Stadium and has opted for world number three Sharapova for singles duty alongside 19th-ranked Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Sharapova had a good run to the final of the first Grand Slam of the season in Melbourne before being thrashed in straight sets by Victoria Azarenka of Belarus.

“I just came to Moscow from Australia and I’m still shocked by the temperature drop (from +30 degrees Celsius to -20C). But I still have time to get accustomed to the weather conditions here,” the Florida-based player said.

“I believe this time I will be able to play better than I did in my previous Fed Cup appearance against France last year. I’ll try to give my best against Spain on front of our home fans in a very important tournament.”

Beaten 3-2 by the Czech Republic in last year’s final at the same Olympic Stadium, the Russian team will be looking for a morale-boosting opener with a team that also includes Nadia Petrova, ranked 33, and 42nd-ranked Ekaterina Makarova.

Spain legend Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario takes charge for the first time as captain of the five-time winners in a team that will be without Anabel Medina Garrigues.

The 39th-ranked Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez is Spain’s top-ranked player, in a team that also includes Carla Suarez Navarro, Arantxa Parra-Santonja and Nuria Llagostera Vives.

“It’s my debut as the Spanish team’s skipper and I’m really proud I’m in charge of this great team,” said Sanchez-Vicario, who holds the record for the most number of Fed Cup wins.

“Russia look clear favourites but we are set to fight to the very end. We are aiming for a place in the final this year.”

Russia hold a 5-1 lead in previous meetings, with Spain’s only success in 1989.

But Sanchez-Vicario insisted: “Statistics doesn’t mean anything. We’re going to fight for every single point in this showdown.

“We feel comfortable on the hard surface in the Olympic indoor stadium here. Of course, the red clay is our preferred surface but we have nothing to complain about.”

Champions the Czech Republic open against Germany on an indoor hard service at Stuttgart, as Belgium host Serbia on the same surface at Charleroi without Kim Clijsters, while three-time winners Italy host Ukraine on indoor clay at Biella.

The Czechs won their most recent meeting in 2010 and lead the Germans 5-1, with four of the six ties when the two nations played under the former flags of West Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Serbia, meanwhile, will be without Ana Ivanovic, with Jelena Jankovic leading their bid to win their first ever World Group tie, against two-time champions Belgium.

In northern Italy, former French Open champion Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta lead the hosts’ bid to preserve their unbeaten record against the Ukraine.

Ties

Russia v Spain

Belgium v Serbia

Ukraine v Italy

Germany v Czech Republic

MUNICH (AP) — Russia’s foreign minister says he still sees two major problems with a draft U.N. resolution on the violence in Syria.

Sergey Lavrov said at a security conference in Germany on Saturday that the latest version of the resolution resolves “quite a number of things which were important to us.” But he added: “It still has basically two things which we would like to modify but they are of crucial importance.”

Lavrov asserted that the resolution makes too few demands of armed groups opposing President Bashar Assad’s regime. He also said Moscow remains concerned about whether it prejudges the outcome of a national dialogue among political forces in Syria.

Lavrov is expected to meet with U.N. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the sidelines of the conference later in the day.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s foreign minister sternly warned Washington Saturday that any attempt to put a draft resolution on Syria to vote at the United Nations would lead to “scandal,” a blunt warning that Moscow is prepared to use its veto power.

Sergey Lavrov said in an interview broadcast on Russian state television Rossiya that Moscow had submitted its amendments to the Western-backed draft. He said that Russia hopes that “bias will not prevail over common sense.”

“If they want another scandal at the U.N. Security Council, we wouldn’t be able to stop them,” Lavrov said, voicing hope that Washington wouldn’t put the draft to vote.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to meet Saturday morning to take up a Syria resolution.

Russia and China, which wield veto power at the Security Council, have blocked previous Western attempts to impose sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime over its crackdown on protests. The U.N. has said that more than 5,400 people have been killed in violence since March. Hundreds more have been killed since that tally was announced, and activists say 200 died in the city of Homs on Saturday.

Russia is opposing any U.N. call for regime change or a military intervention in Syria, its last remaining ally in the region.

The U.S. and its partners have ruled out military action but want the U.N. body to endorse an Arab League plan that calls on Assad to hand power over to Syria’s vice president.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with Lavrov by phone on Friday, and was to meet with him later in the day on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Ahead of that, Clinton told the conference she was hopeful that the U.N. would be able to come to an agreement later in the day:

“As a tyrant in Damascus brutalizes his own people, America and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder. We are united, alongside the Arab League, in demanding an end to the bloodshed and a democratic future for Syria. And we are hopeful that at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time in New York the Security Council will express the will of the international community,” she said.

The resolution, which backs an Arab League plan for political change in Syria, made two significant omissions to meet Russian demands. It left out a specific requirement that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, step down; and it jettisoned a provision for a voluntary arms embargo. Russia is a major supplier of weapons to Syria.

Even so, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennadi M. Gatilov, said Friday that the resolution did not go far enough to bring his country on board.

“We still have a number of concerns because of the essence of this text, and we will be prepared to continue consultations on the draft resolution,” Mr. Gatilov told the Interfax news agency. “ We are willing to continue the work on its finalization, taking into account and proceeding from our principled positions.”

Mr. Gatilov did not outline any specific objections to the resolution, saying only that it was unlikely it would be put to a vote in the Security Council anytime soon. He also left unclear whether Russia would consider vetoing the measure or simply abstaining from the vote.

The draft resolution offers backing to the watered-down version of the Arab League plan, including efforts to facilitate “political transition” to democracy.

As one of Mr. Assad’s few remaining allies, Russia has said it would oppose any plan specifically backing regime change in Syria.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said that Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton had spoken with her Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Friday morning, and that they had agreed to continue to consult on the draft.

Moscow is keen to preserve Syria’s lucrative market for Russian arms, especially now that its weapons contracts in other Middle Eastern countries, particularly Libya, are in question. Russia also maintains an important naval base at the Syrian port of Tartous, giving the Russian fleet access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Also significant is a sense among Russian leaders that they were deceived by the Security Council resolution that paved the way for the NATO campaign in Libya. Russia, which abstained from voting on the measure rather than vetoing it, believes that NATO overstepped its mandate by, officials here say, actively seeking to oust Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, by force.

The drafters of the latest resolution sought to specifically alleviate this concern by including a paragraph that rules out any authorization of Article 42 in the United Nations Charter, a provision that allows for the use of force “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

Russia has tried to intervene in the conflict unilaterally, announcing this week that it had persuaded Mr. Assad’s government to participate in informal talks with the opposition in Moscow. The Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of opposition to Mr. Assad, promptly rejected the overture.

Russia has called on the opposition to assume partial responsibility for the violence in Syria, something anti-Assad forces and many Western governments have rejected.