Moscow
Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos arrives in Moscow for a three-day visit Monday with an agenda dominated by bilateral economic and international issues, Kremlin press office reported in Monday.
Russia has been seeking to re-establish contacts with African states, including oil-rich Angola, under President Vladimir Putin. The president and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made separate tours of the continent this fall, signaling a fresh interest in business cooperation since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which supplied arms and other goods to Africa in the ideological standoff with the West.
Russia is currently Angola’s 10th largest partner, according to Rossiiskaya Gazeta, a government daily. But meeting with Lavrov in September, Soviet-educated Dos Santos urged more intensive cooperation with Russia, above all in the development of new iron ore, oil and gas deposits, and space.
The Kremlin press office said: “A set of bilateral documents is expected to be signed at the meeting.†Other areas of cooperation between Russia and Angola include diamond production, power engineering, and fisheries. Russia’s largest diamond producer, Alrosa, has about a 40% stake in the Catoca diamond joint venture in Angola, which produces around 6 million carats of crude diamonds a year.
Russian companies are helping the country build the largest hydropower plant in the region, with a capacity of 520 mWt, and are in talks on the construction of power lines. Russian fishing companies also catch up to 25,000 metric tons of sea products a year in Angolan waters.
Angola has shown brisk economic development exploiting its vast mineral resources since the government signed a ceasefire agreement with American-backed UNITA rebels in 2002, following 27 years of bloody civil war. The country, which was in ruins several years ago, plans to export up to 2 million barrels of oil annually, largely to the United States and China, by 2008, RIA Novosti reports.
Popularity: 4% [?]
October 30, 2006
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is building an 80 million pounds ($151 million)hospital in Moscow that is likely to become the first port of call for Russia’s rich and famous, The Sunday Times weekly reports.
The Moscow Medical Centre — which is financed by Millhouse LLC, Abramovich’s holding company — will be the country’s most luxurious and technologically advanced hospital.
Located in an 8.7-acre park on the southern edge of the capital a couple of miles from Rublyovka, Moscow’s version of Beverly Hills, the clinic will employ a medical staff of 700 to care for 400 people, including 80 in-house patients.
VIP patients will stay in 750 sq ft suites — the size of an ordinary two-bedroom Russian flat — with their own lavish bathroom and living room equipped with flat-screen television, internet access and fax machine to allow them to keep an eye on their businesses from their sickbeds.
The hospital, which is due to be completed next year, will be “as good as a five-star hotelâ€, said one of the managers overseeing the project.
“It’s aimed at Russia’s growing middle classes as well as the elite, including businessmen and members of the government.â€
“Abramovich is very keen to do his part to improve medical care in Russia,†said John Mann, the billionaire’s spokesman.
Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club with an estimated fortune of more than ?10 billion, is Russia’s richest man. He also backs a fund to help to train young health professionals.
Abramovich’s clinic will be in stark contrast to the majority of Russian hospitals, where the equipment sometimes dates back to the 1970s. Ordinary Russians — who under communism had free access to medical care — are at the mercy of a ruthless system dominated by bribes. Without greasing the palms of doctors and nurses, patients are condemned to long queues and negligent care.
When Abramovich, 40, bought Chelsea more than three years ago, he was criticized at home for not investing enough to improve life in Russia. His new hospital is unlikely to quell Russians’ deep resentment towards their fabulously rich oligarchs.
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Russia has opened a vodka museum with more than 50,000 bottles of the national drink on display, Ananova reports.
The Moscow museum showcases many special versions of the drink, including some bottles produced more than two centuries ago.
There is also a collector’s edition made to commemorate those who died on the K-19 submarine and a hall dedicated to how Russians dealt with the difficult years of the USSR with hard drinking.
Boss Alexander Nikishin also offers visitors 10 different types of the national Russian drink to taste, and promises none of them are from illegal stills.
Every year hundreds of Russians die while drinking illegal distilled vodka sold on the black market.
Popularity: 4% [?]
October 27, 2006
Roman Abramovich, Russia’s richest man and owner of the English soccer club Chelsea, is planning to quit as a regional governor next year, Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.
During his governorship of Chukotka, Abramovich has invested hundreds of millions of dollars and his close Kremlin ties to fight poverty in the bitterly cold and largely deserted region in Russia’s far east across the Bering Strait from Alaska.
“Abramovich is planning to initiate his resignation because he believes he has fulfilled all his tasks,†Interfax quoted an unnamed source in the regional administration as saying. “It’s on everyone’s lips in Chukotka.â€
The source told Interfax Abramovich could tender his resignation in December to leave his job from the New Year.
the Reuters news agency reported that Kremlin and the Chukotka administration officials could not be immediately contacted for comments. Abramovich’s spokesman said by telephone: “I have no information about this.â€
In the years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, marked with a campaign against ’oligarchs’ —- Russia’s super-rich accused by the Kremlin of neglecting national interests —- Abramovich has become a widely cited positive example of a different approach.
Last year, when Kremlin-led campaign against billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky landed him in jail for fraud and tax evasion, rumours flew that Abramovich was planning to quit his Chukotka job and leave Russia.
But within months Putin re-appointed Abramovich, who has property in London and spends much of his time there, as governor for another five years in a move viewed by analysts as a stamp of the Kremlin’s confidence in him.
Interfax quoted analysts close to the Kremlin as saying that if Abramovich decided to leave this time, his move would not be motivated by politics.
“Normally, he does not have political problems,†head of Politika thin tanks, Vyacheslav Nikonov, said. “Almost certainly this is personal, there is nothing political about this.â€
The Russian edition of Forbes magazine this year estimated Abramovich’s wealth — mostly from oil and aluminium assets —- at $18.3 billion.
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October 18, 2006
