Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, meets Kaliningrad region Governor Georgy Boos, left, on August 26, 2006
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Crossing Found to Lithuania
// Vladimir Putin and Georgy Boos Discuss the Ferry
On Saturday Russian President Vladimir Putin met at his residence in Sochi with Georgy Boos, the governor of Kaliningrad oblast. Together they came to the conclusion that Russia is fully capable of securing the transit of long-distance trucks across Lithuania to Kaliningrad. After the meeting with Putin, Boos declared that many powerful secret reserves were unveiled during the meeting that could help Russia emerge victorious in its economic war with Lithuania. Kommersant's special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov reports from Sochi with the details.
Georgy Boos entered Vladimir Putin's office smartly, so to speak: beaming, he literally burst into the office and threw himself headlong at Mr. Putin, who at that moment was standing in the middle of the office and thinking, in my opinion, about something entirely different and who even seemed surprised by Boos's appearance. The governor, briefly confused, shook the president's hand and collapsed into an armchair. The moment before, after some hesitation, he had left some sort of gift in the next room. I made out a baseball hat and a t-shirt. Perhaps this is what Mr. Boos considers Mr. Putin to be in desperate need of at the moment.
Before this meeting, everyone was sure that the conversation between the president of Russia and the governor of the Kaliningrad oblast would focus of the problem of truck transit across Lithuania to Kaliningrad. It somehow seemed strange that the sale of the Lithuanian oil refinery "Mazheikiu Nafta" to the Polish company PKN Orlen, instead of to Rosneft, coincided with the urgent repair of the "Druzhba" oil pipeline, the pipeline by which Russian oil is delivered to the Mazheikui NPZ.
As soon as people in Lithuania received the news, it turned out that it was imperative to immediately repair part of the railroad from Kena to Kibartai, as a result of which all truck transport across Lithuania to Kaliningrad may be stopped completely.
It was expected, of course, that Mr. Boos and Mr. Putin would discuss the problem. There was even hope that they would do so in the presence of journalists.
However, at first it seemed that this hope was not fated to be realized. Mr. Putin proposed to Mr. Boos that they start with the region's energy problems. It very quickly became clear, however, that these problems were past and that they will not appear again in the future. Then the governor described how homes are being for veterans in Kaliningrad. Since the conversation is about the army, a headquarters that will be headed by the regional government minister has been created.
The conversation had already lasted for a quarter of an hour, and not a word had been said about transit or the oil pipeline. It was obvious that Mr. Putin was already looking to wrap things up.
"Good," he said. "Is the ferry line to the Kaliningrad part [of Russia] finished?"
"It's finished!" responded Mr. Boos. "Yakunin (Vladimir Yakunin, chief of the Russian railroad – A.K.) has done a test run (reckless fellow – A.K.). Everything is perfect! The ferry line is capable of completely making up for all of the truck circulation between Kaliningrad oblast and other regions of Russia."
"Including military deliveries?" clarified Mr. Putin.
"Yes, completely!" emphasized the governor. "The ferry crossing is already operating, and that, as the additional link, resolves the problem."
With this final phrase, after which journalists were no longer allowed in the room, they betrayed themselves. Mr. Boos, not holding back, called the transit issue a problem and did not restrain his delight at prospects for its resolution.
After this, Mr. Boos spoke with the president for several more minutes; as he was leaving, he described how he had thoroughly informed Mr. Putin about the program "We are Russians!", whose implementation Mr. Boos is overseeing personally. Within the framework of this program, Kaliningrad schoolchildren, whether they like it or not, go to Russia and try to get to know the country (until now, they have preferred to become acquainted with something a little closer to home, i.e., the countries of the European Union).
Mr. Boos shared some figures with us. It turns out that 96% of schoolchildren polled said that once they had been to mainland Russia, they felt themselves to be, as Mr. Boos quoted them, citizens of the country.
I personally failed to understand what the remaining 4% felt, and it was obvious that Mr. Boos had also felt the pressing need to clear up the question of their relationship with Russia.
"Those four percent didn't feel that way [after the trip] because they already considered themselves [Russian citizens] beforehand," he explained.
Still talking about the "We are Russians!" program, the governor reached into a polyethylene package and pulled out a baseball cap, a t-shirt with the slogan "We are Russians!", and a selection of identically branded pens and pads of paper. It turned out that he had managed to give a set to the president after all – once we had left the office.
Meanwhile, the statistic that the governor had given was, in my opinion, extremely and even critically alarming. Before their trip along the Golden Ring, 96% of Kaliningrad schoolchildren did not consider themselves to be Russian citizens! And of course the program "We are Russians" had managed to take only a few hundred children to Russia, while in the Kaliningrad oblast there remain far greater numbers who have not been on such a trip and who do not consider themselves citizens of Russia. Probably it will just not be possible to take them all to Yaroslavl and Rostov before they reach that happy moment in the life of every young Kaliningrader when he or she, having reached legal age, receives a passport for foreign travel and can choose which countries to subject to detailed scrutiny.
Finally, the governor began to talk about his vision of the transit problem.
"We are currently transporting oil to the NPZ by sea, which is slightly more expensive than via the "Druzhba" oil pipeline," he said.
This means that, in any case, oil is heading for the NPZ. This was already good news (for the NPZ). The bad news (which Mr. Boos did not touch on) is that it hasn't gotten there yet – obviously because the road there is not only more expensive, but much longer (it's not impossible that the oil is being transported around the Cape of Good Hope, for example). Then Mr. Boos revealed that the "Druzhba" pipeline is in very bad shape indeed.
"Its resources are being doubly strained," he said.
The governor, of course, wanted to imply that the repair work on the pipeline was unavoidable, but it seems that he got a little hot under the collar.
"There is the constant possibility there of a serious accident, even of a catastrophe…of European proportions! And even global! – enthused the governor, clearly flattered by the idea that an event of such magnitude could take place on his territory. Maybe he had even already imagined how the results of an oil spill from the "Druzhba" pipeline would attract the attention of the entire world both to the tiny scrap of land with the proud title of Kaliningrad oblast and personally to him, governor Georgy Boos.
Answering a question about whether he had received official notice from Lithuanian officials concerning the repairs being done on the railroad, the governor declared that "no, they have not sent a single note!"
He appeared shocked by what he had said and even, it seemed, became somewhat irritated by the fact.
"Our ferry," he announced, as if he were already replying to a note that had not yet been sent, "will completely compensate for any problems that might arise."
It turned out that he and Vladimir Putin had in fact discussed the matter.
"I reported," he explained, "to the president of Russia what kind of backup insurance options we have if Lithuania completely shuts off its territory to through traffic.
It became clear that, according to Georgy Boos, besides the ferry two or three other possible solutions had been discovered.
To the question of why they are needed if he insists that the ferry meets all the truck transit requirements, Mr. Boos replied that, just in case, it is obviously always better to have some additional options. In doing so, he showed his full readiness for an economic war with Lithuania.
I asked the governor if, in his opinion, Lithuania is aware of what it is doing. As could have been predicted, Georgy Boos came alive.
"Oh, in such situations I always recall a saying that I am on the verge of repeating now. Here is it, my favorite: "poke out your own eye – let your mother-in-law will have a one-eyed son-in-law!"
"Or as they also say, 'to spite my mother, I'll lose my ears to frostbite!'" I rejoined.
"Exactly!" laughed Georgy Boos. "So if they close it off, then so be it! But all the same I cannot believe it will come to that, because that would mean that sound judgment has been relegated to the background, while unsound thinking has won out."
However, the governor did admit that he does not believe overly much in the development of a catastrophic scenario in the relations between Lithuania and Kaliningrad oblast.
"I, on the other hand, believe that that's not very realistic," he explained. "There have been such problems before, and we had talks with the Lithuanian leadership, when the prime minister was Mr. Brazauskas, and we came to an agreement, that we will not do such things to each other, because we are mutually dependent on each other! But then the prime minister there changed," remembered Mr. Boos sadly, "and today, by the way, there exists a discriminatory tariff on goods transported by train. Do you know about that?"
Mr. Putin spoke in depth about that tariff with Russian railroad chief Vladimir Yakunin, who was the next in line that day to meet with the head of the government.
"But here is the problem," said Mr. Yakunin at some point. "For example, through transport, for example, to Kaliningrad, without a doubt is a problem that has great important for us, and we, of course, will resolve it. We absolutely clearly and actively are implementing all the decisions that are made according to the project "Two K," which, as you know, was initiated many years ago. Unfortunately, our partners are the railroad workers of Lithuania…and, according to all the evidence, not only the railroad workers, but also the politicians, who set the railroad tariffs," said Mr. Yakunin with great certainty (that day, thanks to his meeting with Mr. Putin, he was generally speaking extremely confidently and sometimes even condescendingly – A.K.). "They are trying to work according to the principle "let's gobble up our own…wait, no, yours instead… And then everyone gets their own!"
"Their tariffs to Klaipeda are two and a half times lower than those to Kaliningrad," nodded the president.
"Absolutely true," confirmed Yakunin. "For example, Belorussians come to us, we strike a deal with them about the transit of trucks, it comes out that it's economically inadvisable, that's the kind of gap in the tariffs to Kaliningrad or to Klaipeda.
"We had talks with the Lithuanian leadership," explains Boos, "in order to even out the tariffs. And Klaipeda and Kaliningrad would have both received additional loads! Instead, they backed out at the last second! Even though we should have done that to them!" said the governor with lively vindictive pleasure. "Equal transit possibilities are a requirement of the European Union."
They didn't finish the sentence: for the countries of the European Union.
Towards the end of the conversation the governor, who had tried very hard to come across as good-natured, at my question about why, in his opinion, would the Lithuanians need such a scandal, changed noticeably and decisively revealed the most terrible secret (not his own, however):
"They did this under pressure from someone."
"But after all, they, as you said, are losing money."
"That means," Georgy Boos informed me, involuntarily lowering his voice, "that some source of compensation has appeared."
The governor of Kaliningrad oblast, it seems, is already carrying on a war – and not even with real enemies, but with imaginary ones.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 28, 2006
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