Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrives in Ukraine today for a visit aimed at cementing ties with President Victor Yanukovych and boosting economic cooperation.

Mr Yanukovych has dismissed a proposal for Russia's state gas monopoly Gazprom to take control of Ukraine's gas pipeline network but Russia still hopes for economic integration with the Ukraine gas company and a possible joint venture over the piplines which carry Russian gas to European consumers.

Other deals, on borders, banking, a GPS-type navigation system and nuclear co-operation are due to be signed.

Last month, Ukraine approved a deal with Moscow, extending the lease for Russia's Black Sea fleet at its base on the Crimean peninsula in exchange for significantly cheaper Russian gas imports.

The deal has proved unpopular with Ukraine's opposition, which sees it as undermining Ukraine's sovereignty. Mr Yanukovych defended it as reducing the country's budget deficit. The Crimea Peninsula has a predominantly ethnic Russian population and was only ceded to Ukraine by Soviet head of state Leonid Khruschev.

Ahead of his visit, Mr Medvedev said the navy deal would benefit the security of the whole of Europe.

Analysts say Mr Yanukovych will seek to balance Russia and the EU in pursuit of Ukrainian interests.

DJIBOUTI - This Horn of Africa state, will provide its port for Russian Navy to fight piracy, Djibouti Navy official representative said at a May Day reception at the Russian embassy.

"We are ready to provide our port for ships of the Russian Navy, which are fighting piracy in the region," he said adding that the port has all essential infrastructures.

The Russian task force comprising the RFS Marshal Shaposhnikov, the MB-37 salvage tug and the Pechenga tanker arrived in the Gulf of Aden on March 29 to join the anti-piracy mission in the region.

Somali pirates carried out a record number of attacks and hijackings in 2009. According to the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Center, a total of 217 vessels were attacked last year, resulting in 47 hijackings.

Last week Russia had to release ten pirates captured during an operation to free its Moscow University tanker, citing a lack of proper international legal base to carry out prosecution procedures against pirates.

(RIA-Novosti)

The company managing the Raspadskaya coal mine in Russia's west Siberia which was recently hit by deadly explosions has reduced coal shipping to consumers by 70%, the company CEO said.

General director Gennady Kozovoi told journalists Sunday that there is no more coal at company depots.

Two methane explosions hit the Raspadskaya mine near the town of Mezhdurechensk in the Kemerovo Region a week ago, killing at least 66 people and leaving over 100 injured.

Twenty-four people are still missing underground but high levels of methane gas in the mine have forced the suspension of rescue work for at least a week.

Analysts polled by RIA Novosti earlier said the Russian market could face a lack of coal due to the Raspadskaya accident. The Raspadskaya mine ensures some 10% of coal supplies in Russia.

Earlier reports suggested that it would take a year to restore the coal mine and that the work would cost some 6 billion rubles ($200 mln).

Kemerovo Region Governor Aman Tuleyev on Saturday blamed the fatal accident at Raspadskaya on the owners of the mine. Raspadskaya owners have become the targets of fierce criticism over the accident, and federal investigators denied on Saturday reports that the company's top executives were under house arrest.

Miners and their families protested in Mezhdurechensk on Friday, claiming that they were forced to disable safety equipment in order to meet production targets, accusations that have been rejected by mine management.

(RIA-Novosoti)

Russia's North Caucasus presidential envoy Alexander Khloponin has proposed an ambitious $15-billion project aimed at reviving the regional tourism industry that twice exceeds the Sochi-2014 Olympic games' costs, a Russian business daily said on Monday.

Kommersant daily quoted the first vice-president of Russian Olympic Committee, Akhmed Bilalov, as saying Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asked Khloponin to make a draft project on creating 5 tourist resorts in the North Caucasus.

The North Caucasus has been plagued by militant violence for years, with attacks on police, soldiers and officials a daily occurrence. It has also seen two brutal separatist wars in Chechnya.

In the nineteenth century and following the Soviet era, the North Caucasus was a major travel spot with picturesque rocks, meadows, mountain rivers, and lakes, which attracted people to the area, as well as sulfur springs and historical Medieval watch towers.

Deputy North Caucasus presidential envoy Maxim Bystrov told Kommersant that resorts are planned to be created in Matlas (Dagestan), Mamison (North Ossetia), Arkhyz (Karachay-Cherkessia Republic), Lago-Naki (The Republic of Adygea) and Elbrus (The Kabardino-Balkar Republic).

The "tourism cluster" will be created between 2011 through 2020.

The cost of the project exceeds twice that for the Sochi-2014 Winter Olympic Games. It is estimated about 451.44 billion rubles ($15 billion). Institutional investors are set to allocate half of the amount and 119.28 billion rubles may be given by private investors.

Khloponin said the government is expected to provide only 13% of the total cost of the project for the creation of the traffic infrastructure and engineering facilities.

Kommersant quoted a member of the working group, IST Cosulting Group executive director, Saaken Kanapyanov, as saying Sberbank may become an investing consultant for the project.

According to the expert, the investment proposals on the projects have already been presented to Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citi, and Allianz investment banks.

Bilalov told Kommersant the payback period for the project is about ten years.

The paper quoted the sports official as saying the new project will give 160,000 workplaces for people in the district. The tourist turnover will comprise 5-10 million people annually, equal to Austria's resort turnover.

Khloponin's optimistic project faces opposition among members of the tourism business community.

"Such figures are unlikely to be reached even after the constructions of new airports," Kommersant quoted a CNP tourism company CEO, Nikolai Puzarin, as saying.

Azimut Hotels Company CEO Alexander Genedelsman told Kommersant that hotels may remain empty because of the short tourism season in Russia (4-6 months).

The authors of the project plan to spend about 175.56 billion rubles ($5.85 billion) to develop the hotel infrastructure.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said earlier in the year the republic intends to create a large ski resort in its southeastern Argun Gorge, a former militant stronghold.

Kadyrov announced his plans in early January to develop tourism in the republic. He said the Argun Gorge, one of Chechnya's most picturesque areas located on the border with Georgia, could be an ideal place for a ski resort.

(RIA Novosti)

Although South Korea had been making gains in securing deals to build nuclear plants in the Middle East, Russia has emerged as the winner for Turkey's $20 billion nuclear power plant.

The nuclear plant, Turkey's first, will be built at Akkuyu on the country's Mediterranean coast. The awarding of the contract comes despite a Turkish court nullifying a tender last year by a Russian-led group to build four reactors at Akkuyu. 

Russia will own a controlling stake in the plant, making it the first Russian-owned plant outside of Russia. (EIN News)

By ANDREI ZOLOTOV Jr.

But the Kremlin’s effort to cement Russia’s status as world power by clinging as much a possible to the post-1945 era was short-sighted. It is clear today that the 60th anniversary of the World War II victory in 2005 was the peak of ideological efforts to rehabilitate Soviet symbols and consolidate the population of the Russian Federation — that nation in the making — on the basis of the Soviet, essentially Stalinist, concept of the Great Patriotic War.

Back then, our government tried to impose this perception on the rest of the world. We got a negative reaction, mainly from Poland, but also from people in the Baltic states, as well as in Ukraine. We remember well all the talk about those who refused to come to the parade in Moscow, as well as other similar developments, like the scandal in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, over efforts to move the monument to the Soviet soldier away from the city center.

Several months ago, as the build-up for the 65th anniversary began, I worried that the neo-Stalinist trend would lead to more exercises in chest-banging that would once again alienate our neighbors and reinforce the Soviet-like image of modern Russia. I was afraid it would be even worse than it was five years ago.

But I was wrong. In fact, things turned out much better than they did five years ago. It would be a simplification to say that it is all due to President Dmitri Medvedev, as opposed to his predecessor, the current prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

The remarkable Russian-Polish reconciliation, which began with the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre in early April, reportedly originated from Mr. Putin’s office. It was magnified by the crash of the Polish presidential plane in Smolensk and the outpouring of popular sympathy, which did much to lift the centuries-long animosity between the two nations, something no inter-government commissions could have ever achieved.

Yet Mr. Medvedev as clearly left a personal, softer mark on the ceremonies last Sunday. Having foreign military units from the United States, Britain, France, Poland and former Soviet nations march in the Red Square parade — that bulwark of selfish nationalism framed in a distinctly Soviet setting — was a definite breakthrough. There were quite a few unhappy Communists, but they had to swallow their complaints.

There was not a single aggressive statement in the president’s speech at the parade — a must in the previous years, always along the lines that some unnamed power (presumably the United States) was nurturing plans to achieve global hegemony. Instead, Mr. Medvedev emphasized that the victory was achieved together with the other Allies — although, of course, the Soviet Union played a decisive role. And it was the small details — like Beethoven’s 9th Symphony played by the international military band, or Mr. Putin shown on television chatting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, presumably in German — that created a dignified framework for this traditional show of military might. It made me feel proud of my country and not ashamed of its Soviet flavor.

Of course, the Great Patriotic War is a complicated matter. In the face of an existential threat, the historical Russia somehow re-emerged in the Soviet Union during the war — and then was eclipsed again. At the same time, there were quite a few people who saw World War II as a continuation of the Russian Civil War, who saw the Nazis as a lesser evil and collaborated with them, not because the collaborators were traitors, but because that was how they saw their patriotic duty.

But there were others, including some far from the U.S.S.R., who saw the war from the outset as a patriotic one. On the day Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, my great-grand uncle, Lt. Gen. Pyotr Makhroff, one of the highest-ranking officers of the anti-Bolshevik White Army, long an émigré in France, formally requested to be enrolled in the Red Army. For that, the Vichy Regime had him incarcerated in a prison camp in Algeria.

For many Russians, commemorating our nation’s greatest national sacrifice is a question of measure, detail and interpretation. Although it is impossible in our memories and commemorations of World War II to fully escape Soviet symbolism, Russia dealt pretty well with this latest Victory Day anniversary. It has been an important, coming-of-age experience for our old nation, and our new one.

Andrei Zolotov Jr. is the chief editor of Russia Profile. This article originally appeared in the International Herald Tribune of 14th May 2010.