Russia 100715 Basic Political Developments

Last Updated: July 15, 2010 02:02 EDT

Bloomberg: Siemens to Produce 1,200 Railway Cars in Russia This Decade

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aq5wqHjosE3M

By Lyubov Pronina

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Siemens AG, the German maker of the ICE high-speed train, will produce 1,200 railway cars in Russia this decade as President Dmitry Medvedev seeks to modernize the country’s infrastructure, OAO Russian Railways Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Yakunin said.

Russian Railways, the country’s rail monopoly, will sign the purchase agreement with Siemens today, during talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Yakunin said in an interview late yesterday.

Russia, the world’s largest energy exporter, is seeking help from western companies to upgrade its sprawling but worn out infrastructure and diversify the economy. Medvedev said July 12 that Russia should create “modernization alliances” with countries such as Germany, France, Italy and the U.S., putting its foreign policy on a more pragmatic footing.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Moscow at

Last Updated: July 15, 2010 02:00 EDT

RIA: Russia requests Dreamliner jet delivery before Winter Olympics - Transport Ministry

http://en.rian.ru/business/20100715/159820611.html
11:36 15/07/2010

The Russian Transport Ministry has requested Boeing, the world's top aerospace company, to deliver Boeing 787 Dreamliners to the country's flagship carrier Aeroflot two years ahead of schedule by 2014, Minister Igor Levitin said on Thursday.

"I have met with the company`s president and asked him to change the deadline. It was moved to 2016 and we are asking to bring it forward to 2014," Levitin told reporters.

The planes are needed for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games which will take place in the city of Sochi in the south of Russia. "We want the official carrier of the Olympic Games to use the planes during the Games," he said without specifying the number of planes.

Aeroflot General Director Vitaly Savelyev has said that the company planned to get 22 Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes to upgrade the company's fleet.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is Boeing's new project. The new plane can carry 250-300 passengers at a distance of 16,299 kilometers.

YEKATERINBURG, Russia, July 15 (RIA Novosti)

Bloomberg: Airbus May Expand Russia Partnership Into Aircraft Development

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-15/airbus-may-expand-russia-partnership-into-aircraft-development.html
July 15, 2010, 12:27 AM EDT

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Airbus SAS, the world’s largest planemaker, said it may expand its partnership in Russia by jointly developing a future aircraft, not the 150-seat jet now planned by a Russian state-controlled company.

It will take time to move beyond an existing alliance in Russia that creates freighters from A320 single-aisle passenger planes, Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said yesterday in an interview in Yekaterinburg. Russia’s OAO Irkut Corp. will develop the MC-21 on its own, Enders said.

“We have always said this is a long-haul strategy,” he said. “We start small then we go to bigger projects like the freighter conversion. And then maybe, some day, we will be able to also develop aircraft together.”

Irkut has said it intends to develop a 150-seater that would challenge Airbus’s own single-aisle A320 as well as Boeing Co.’s 737 series. The plane is in a preliminary design phase and management will give further details about planned development at the Farnborough International Airshow next week.

“Russian colleagues have already decided on the MC-21,” Enders said. “I think the development has started. We don’t see a replacement of our very successful single-aisle family A320 family for the next 15 years or so.”

Enders was in Yekaterinburg, a city in Russia’s Ural Mountain region, as part of a delegation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Enders said Airbus, based in Toulouse, France, is seeing signs of a nascent recovery in the commercial aircraft business following a recession in 2009.

“We saw signs of it at the Berlin air show” in June, he said, and he is “cautiously optimistic” that the recovery will be evident at Farnborough.

Airbus is owned by European Aeronautic, Defense & Space Co.

--With assistance from Andrea Rothman in Toulouse, France. Editors: Elizabeth Wollman, Romaine Bostick

To contact the reporters on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Moscow at [e-mail].

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at [e-mail]

Bloomberg: Russian Government Earmarks $5.6 Billion for Technology Hub

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ad1zieSU0q1s
By Lyubov Pronina

July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Russia’s government will set aside 170 billion rubles ($5.6 billion) for the construction of a technology hub in the Moscow suburb of Skolkovo, President Dmitry Medvedev said today after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Medvedev invited Germany to invest in “non-strategic” Russian companies, the leader said after talks in Yekaterinburg today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Moscow at [e-mail]

Last Updated: July 15, 2010 01:10 EDT

July 15, 2010 12:00

Interfax: Russian weapons contract with Iran still on – official

http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=177383

YEKATERINBURG. July 15 (Interfax) - An $800 million deal to sell S-300 air defense missiles to Iran has not yet been cancelled, Sergei Chemezov, the head of the Russian Technologies state corporation, told journalists in Yekaterinburg on Thursday.

Asked whether the contract will be closed, Chemezov said, "This should be a presidential decision."

"The contract has not been annulled so far," he said.

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Itar-Tass: President signs decree on four joint strategic commands in Russia

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15319753&PageNum=0

15.07.2010, 03.33

MOSCOW, July 15 (Itar-Tass) -- President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday on Wednesday signed a decree ordering the creation of four joint strategic commands in Russia.

The same decree also ordered the creation of a unified logistical system, chief of the Russian Army General Staff, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov said.

Under the decree, four military districts and four joint strategic commands will be created.

The Moscow and Leningrad military districts will form the Western Military District (Joint Strategic Command Zapad, or West) that will incorporate the troops of the two previous military districts, the Northern and the Baltic fleets.

The North Caucasian Military District will be reorganised into the Southern Military District (Joint Strategic Command Yug, or South), incorporating the Black Sea Fleet.

The Volga-Urals Military District and the western part of the Siberian Military District will make up the Central Military District (Joint Strategic Command Tsentr, or Centre).

The remaining part of the Siberian Military District and the Far Eastern Military District will form the Eastern Military District (Joint Strategic Command Vostok, or East), incorporating the Pacific Fleet.