By a fortunate coincidence, one of the crews of St. George nuclear submarine was free from urgent duties on the day of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Commander-in-Chief Visits Kamchatka
// After meeting with Kamchatka’s submariners, Vladimir Putin plunged into the regional gas-supply problems
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived on Wednesday to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and visited the military town of Vilyuchinsk, where he played volleyball with First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. The president then attended a session devoted to the Kamchatka Region’s social and economic development. During the session, Putin organized a tender between RAO UES and Gazprom for building a gas pipeline, and chose Gazprom as its winner. Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov brings the details from Kamchatka.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Magadan nuclear submarines were getting ready to receive the Russian president. However, it was a little strange that the crews of Samara and St. George submarines descended to the peer from the board of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Magadan submarines. The mariners explained that St. George and Samara submarines are away at sea with other crews. That is why the mariners got free time to greet the president. When I asked which crews were onboard St. George and Samara (or, perhaps, there were no crews at all, which makes the story immediately acquire a spellbinding, mystic hue), they said that every submarine has two crews. So, one crew is always ready to greet important visitors. However, they could not tell me where both crews of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky submarine and both crews of Magadan submarine were. Indeed, I was asking too much from these people.
Meanwhile, deputy commander of the 16th submarine squadron was proudly telling about the recent visit of the U.S. 7th fleet’s deputy commander, who allegedly said after seeing a Russian ballistic missile submarine cruiser: “No wonder we were trained so, and afraid of you so much.” While the officer was telling that touching urban myth, which served for raising the military personnel’s morale ever since Russia’s early post-Soviet period, he did not notice the commander-in-chief coming. Mariners pumped so much air into their lungs to greet the president that I became afraid several of them could explode. Everything was all right, though. The mariners greeted Putin as if it was an echo talking to him.
“So, are you satisfied on the whole?” the president asked Samara submarine’s commander.
“Yes, we are!” barked that bulldog-like man, not looking at the president.
He seemed to be away in his thoughts. I wouldn’t like to be that man’s enemy (although there is some risk of it after this report). I would neither like to be someone to whom he has nothing personal, that is someone whom he usually sees through the periscope of his submarine.
“Is housing provided for the crew?” asked Putin.
“Yes, sir!” the commander barked again.
After that heart-to-heart talk on the pier, Vladimir Putin went to see the new homes of mariners and their families. There are four new apartment blocks in Vilyuchinsk. They appeared after Putin’s visit in 2004, when the president was extremely upset with what he saw.
Frankly speaking, these four buildings are not new. They were derelict since the early 1990s, but they had been built in the 1960s. Nowadays, these five-storey walk-ups are faced with metal-and-clay panels. However, builders left the apartments unchanged inside, with their ill-famed five-square-meter kitchens and tiny bathrooms. Apparently, the walk-ups will now, since they are faced, stand for many years more.
Putin entered one of the apartments. A submarine foreman and his young family live there. Judging by the stuffed toys sitting on radiators, the family has at least one child. Apparently, the child was wisely taken away from the one-room apartment. However, it might be the foreman himself who plays with the toys when relaxing after another long voyage.
“How was your flight, your trip?” Polina, the foreman’s wife, melodiously asked the president.
“It was good, thank you,” Putin laughed somewhat nervously. “I slept for three hours [out of the nine hours of the flight.—A.K.].”
Polina complained about a catastrophic lack of kindergartens in the town. Young mothers sign up their children immediately after birth (and cleverest mothers, I suspect, do it even before birth), so that their turn in the queue for kindergarten comes right in time when a child reaches the age of three.
“All right, you’ve made an order,” said Putin, ignoring the table richly served with apples, mandarins, oranges, a cake, and a huge plate with red-caviar sandwiches. Evidently, the family is never in want of red caviar.
Outside, Putin approached a group of citizens who asked him to make the prices in a local sport complex with a water park stay the same. The complex was built by the Russian Defense Ministry’s construction agency instead of a swimming pool promised three years ago.
“I’ve been there today, there are no prices at all!” assured them Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Putin visited the complex as well. Everything here seemed busy with active physical training: the workout room was full of people pumping iron; aerobics was going on in the gym. The president passed these people so rapidly that I thought he was looking for something more definite here. If it was the same thing I was looking for, he would be somewhat disappointed: there were no toilet bowls in the restrooms yet. At first sight, everything was perfect here, but toilet bowls seemed to be an extravagance for the military builders. I suspect there are no toilet bowls in the Defense Ministry’s construction agency at all: they are more used to building barracks.
The president definitely liked the water park. He also liked a volleyball playground on the forth storey of the complex. Watching two teams warm up, Putin nodded to Ivanov, who immediately took off his jacket, and approached the players:
“Guys, can we join you?”
The guys made the noise of approval. Putin served (but his team eventually lost the ball) and nodded to Ivanov:
“C’mon.”
“I can do it just in a country-like manner,” warned Ivanov and hit the ball from below, but scored all right.
This combination, Vladimir Putin and Sergei Ivanov, seems to be utterly overworked. Or, at least, it is the impression that the president seems wishing to produce in his every journey.
At the session in the new House of Navy Officers, Putin asked why the Sobolev Gas Pipeline is not built yet. The pipeline is to connect the Sobolev gas deposit with the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
“The pipeline is in federal property… But nothing has been done yet!” exclaimed Putin. “And everyone’s pointing at each other! Why not giving it to Gazprom? They would do everything long ago! You’re just picking your noses. What can you pick there?”
The president looked indignantly at the federal officials, denying them the right even to pick their noses.
Several minutes later, Putin returned to the gas pipeline issue. Obviously, it was his prime interest there.
“Energy delivery is the region’s key issue. Rosneft dealt with it. So what?” the president turned to Rosneft head Sergei Bogdanchikov.
“Right,” agreed the latter, “we dealt with it, but then we left the project and deal with it no longer.”
Bogdanchikov made it clear that is the reason why he should not be asked any more questions.
“Why?” asked Putin.
“The project was economically unprofitable,” shrugged Bogdanchikov, and wanted to add something, but the president interrupted him:
“Right, a stock company does not deal with unprofitable projects.”
“But the project’s repayment period is 18 years,” managed to put in Bogdanchikov.
“Did you discuss the project with the Government?” asked Putin. “I’m looking into the list of the Government’s tasks for 2000. Financing the pipeline’s construction is number one on the list. Population outflow from Petropavlovsk is mainly due to the problem: energy tariffs are huge when fuel oil is used. You haven’t done a thing! Why? Vitaly Gennadievich [Saveliev, deputy minister of Russia’s economic development and trade.—A.K.], why didn’t you do anything to make the project profitable?”
“We have already stipulated 3 billion rubles in the federal budget. RAO UES and Gazprom may come there. They have already expressed interest… The most important question now is which of them enters the project.”
“Don’t you think that seven years (since 2000) is a too long period of time for deciding that?” the president refused to turn in the suggested direction. “Everything you speak of could be done in 2001. Why the military officials can? I gave instruction to them in 2004, and they built everything. And you? That began back in Kasyanov’s times!” said Putin with annoyance. Yet, he immediately realized these words of his would resound in a grateful echo at Other Russia’s rallies, and added: “It began with Kasyanov, with Gref…We have the project’s direct performers here, -- Chubais.”
“For us, it is a question of the project’s energy security,” immediately began RAO UES head with his standard set of ultra-significant words. “We have prepared an agreement with the governor. We signed a protocol today, we flied along the route, we are ready to provide…”
Anatoly Chubais, having a special intuition for that sort of discussions, came to the session himself, instead of sending his deputies, like many other federal officials did. He must have been thanking himself for it now.
“Today, I am ready to announce that Gazprom is interested in the project,” hastily said Gazprom board’s deputy chairman Golubev.
However, he set several conditions. He suggested that Kamchatskgazprom state company should exchange a 100-percent package of its shares for Gazprom shares. Besides, Golubev insists on allowing Gazprom to geologically explore Kamchatka’s ocean shelf. In return, Golubev offered to relieve the federal budget of the 3-billion-ruble expenditures on building the pipeline:
“We’ll exchange shares with the state, and budget financing will be unnecessary.”
Chubais did not have such trump cards. On the other hand, he does not need Kamchatskgazprom.
“Did you discuss it with RAO UES?” asked Putin. He must have been surprised that two companies at once wanted to build the pipeline.
“Their approach is different,” Golubev began immediately giving away the competitor. “They want to be the project’s operators. Meanwhile, the price of electric energy will be just by 10-15 percent lower than that of fuel oil… That’s frankly speaking,” he said with hesitation, not looking in Chubais’ direction. “If it is Gazprom, the prices will be different.”
“The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade should decide which of the two variants is the best,” ruled Putin. “How much time is necessary?”
Saveliev faltered:
“The question is not in my competence. It won’t be I to decide.”
“Why did you come here then?” the president interrupted him.
“We can decide before the month ends,” Saveliev figured it out at last.
Anyway, it is obvious with whom the president sides. He declared it at the session’s beginning (“Why not giving it to Gazprom? They would do everything long ago!”) and repeated it in the end.
“I definitely support it. The project should be given to Gazprom. If we sit on it like a dog in the manger, it won’t develop. The resource base should be provided here, so that we do not chew the cud for years. Please, do it as soon as possible. Did you understand what I’ve said?” and Vladimir Putin turned to Anatoly Temkin, deputy minister of natural resources.
Andrei Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 06, 2007
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