the long march to limbo: syria's refugees flee chaos to a life of uncertainty

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Grim forecasts

Big earthquakes on the way for Russia's Far East

P 3

The Russian film festival features war films with a difference

Women as war heroes

Thursday, October 15, 2015

The long march to limbo: Syria’s refugees flee chaos to a life of uncertainty

RUSSIA MUST DECIDE HOW TO

RESPOND TO THE THOUSANDS

SEEKING ASYLUM IN MOSCOW

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02

MOST READ TEN REASONS YOU SHOULD NEVER VISIT MOSCOW

asia.rbth.com/multimedia/394137News round-up

Hermitage to open museum in Moscow

Moscow wary of NATO plans

Russian animation nominated for award

Kremlin may offer dollar, yuan bonds

ARTS

CULTURE

EUROPE

FINANCE

St Petersburg’s world-famous State Hermitage Museum is to open a branch in Moscow.The new museum will be open by 2022.

It will be part of the ZILART residential complex on the former site of the ZIL factory, which was founded in 1916 for manufacturing trucks.

Some of the site’s heritage buildings will be preserved, while others will be replaced

Russian animated fi lm Snow Queen 2 has received a nom-ination for best animated fea-ture at the 9th Asia Pacifi c Screen Awards, to be held in Brisbane on November 26.

“We're very pleased that our project was nominated for this prestigious award,” said Yury Moskvin, producer of Wizart Animation, which created the Snow Queen series.

Moskvin said the Asia Pacifi c Screen Awards were growing in prestige every year and were increasingly being referred to as the “Asia-Pacifi c region’s Oscars”.

Moscow may enter foreign markets with bonds denom-inated in US dollars and Chi-nese yuan in 2016, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has announced.

“We might enter foreign markets, as a number of our companies are doing now,” he said. “Let's see what the de-mand is like for our bonds and what investor interest is like. If it’s acceptable, we will enter in the standard way, as we did three years ago.

“We could also place [bonds] in the currencies of our Asian partners, so as to pay in these currencies in our trade with these partners.”

Siluanov said these propos-

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RBTH has chosen the top 10 most beautiful uninhabited islands in the territory of the Russian Federation.

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NATO defence ministers have announced plans to beef up the alliance’s presence in cen-tral and eastern Europe to counter perceived threats from Russia.

At the NATO summit in Brussels on October 8, Moscow was again accused of targeting moderate rebel groups instead of ISIS mili-tants in its bombing cam-paign in Syria.

Opening the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the UK’s decision to deploy troops to the Baltic states and Poland on a rotational basis.

Stoltenberg also announced NATO’s plan to establish ad-ditional command centres in Slovakia and Hungary (six such centres already exist in central and eastern Europe) and the decision to increase the strength of its rapid-re-action force to 40,000 troops.

The secretary general said that the need to “fortify the alliance” was because of the

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the alliance summit in Brussels.

als were under consideration and no fi nal decisions had yet been made.

“But we don’t rule out that we could enter the foreign market and borrow there next year,” he added.

When asked which Asian partners the government was considering, Siluanov said: “Mainly Chinese partners. We will work with our Chinese partners and look into these issues.

“If they show interest, we will be prepared to enter the markets and borrow in yuan.

“We will explain our fi nan-cial policy and debt poten-tial to our Asian partners and Western partners.

“Money on the domestic market will be the main bor-rowing source next year, but we are also exploring the pos-sibility of entering external markets to get in aggregate up to 200 billion roubles.”

art here and give it the atten-tion it deserves.

“The Hermitage already has a lot of experience in organising large-scale ex-hibitions of this kind.”

Ozerkov also said there would be exhibitions of Im-pressionist and post-Impres-sionist paintings from the Hermitage collection and from its vaults, as well as exhibitions of contemporary artists from St Petersburg.

by a new complex which will feature a theatre and concert hall as well as the new Her-mitage museum.

According to Dmitry Ozerkov, the curator and director of the Hermitage 20/21 project, the Moscow branch of the museum will focus on contemporary art.

“Moscow is not as conserv-ative as St Petersburg,” Ozerkov said. “People are ac-customed to contemporary

Russian Finance Minister

Anton Siluanov.

Ukrainian crisis and Russia’s operations in Syria.

The announcements in Brussels provoked an expect-ed reaction from Moscow.

Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov ac-

cused NATO of concealing its actions to further expand the a l l i a n c e t o R u s s i a ’s borders behind “fictitious pretexts of an apparent Rus-sian threat”.

Peskov also underlined that

the alliance’s actions “will lead to retaliatory measures in order to create the neces-sary parity”.

Read full version at

asia.rbth.com/49959

RUSSIAN CULTURAL EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA

THE VOLATINSKY TRIO

OCT 25

The Australian trio celebrates the eastern European backgrounds and musical training of its mem-bers, who play the cimbalom (a Russian hammer dulcimer with 78 strings), the domra (a Russian mandolin), the guitar and the cello. › stickytickets.com.au/26430/

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NATASHA MOROZOVA

CONCERT

OCT 25

Morozova, a prize-winning Moscow-born pianist and graduate of the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, comes from a musical family. She grew up listening to Russian folk music, sacred music and classical, and these influences can be felt in her soulful performances. › trybooking.com/160976

THE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN

BALLET'S SWAN LAKE TOUR

UNTIL OCT 31

The itinerant ballet company, which was established after the fall of the Soviet Union by the former Bolshoi Ballet soloist Gediminas Taranda, has been incredibly popular in Australia on previous tours. This spring, the company is taking Swan Lake to cities and regional centres across Australia. › russianballet.com.au/

MASTERPIECES FROM THE

HERMITAGE: THE LEGACY OF

CATHERINE THE GREAT

UNTIL NOV 8

The National Gallery of Victoria is showing masterpieces from Russia's most renowned museum. › tngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/

masterpieces-from-the-hermitage

TCHAIKOVSKY'S

SERENADE FOR STRINGS

OCT 27

Under the direction of Richard Gill, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will perform this 1880 work. The serenade was written as a

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IN OUR GLOBAL CALENDAR

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tribute to Mozart and is known for the Russian theme of its finale and because it was used as the foundation of George Balanchine's ballet Serenade. › mso.com.au

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INTRODUCTORY VIDEO

FIVE BEST ANIMATED FILMS FROM THE KROK FESTIVAL

asia.rbth.com/49809 Arts

KATHERINE TERSRBTH

To mark the 70th anniversary

of the end of World War II,

Australia's Russian film

festival features 10 war

films, including several

about women soldiers.

Festival shines light on role of women in war

Cinema This year's Russian Resurrection Film Festival in Australia will feature 24 films, 18 of them new releases

In Melbourne and Sydney, the Russian Resurrection Film Festival will open with Bat-talion, while in Canberra and Brisbane The Battle for Sevastopol will head the program.

Festival founder Nicholas Maksymow told RBTH that these fi lms – both based on true stories about women – were the strongest war fi lms released in Russia this year.

The Battle for SevastopolDirected by cinematogra-pher Sergei Mokritsky, this Russian-Ukrainian co-pro-duction is about a Ukrain-ian-born Soviet sniper, Ly-udmila Pavlichenko (played by Yuliya Peresild).

The fi lm covers her time in combat and a diplomatic mis-sion she went on to rally the US to join the war effort.

A fi lm depicting Russians and Ukrainians fi ghting side

by side, defending the terri-tory of present-day Ukraine and Russian Crimea, has obviously come at a contro-versial time.

The fi lm’s production began back in 2012, and Mokritsky told the Russian media that as tensions in Ukraine turned to violence, he feared the film’s reception would be tainted. But it was released in both countries in April, in Russian and Ukrainian, and it proved to be a box-office success in both.

Despite Pavlichenko being regarded as a legendary Soviet war hero, credited with 309 kills, and despite the fi lm showing her navigating the fronts at Odessa and Sevas-topol – for the most part – unfl inchingly, the character's frailty was played up.

On the kinopoisk.ru web-site (Russia’s equivalent of IMBD), the fi lm received this write-up: “Love under relent-less enemy fire, friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, a speech that could affect the outcome of the war, the de-sire to live and the fear of losing a loved one – can you cope with all of this, you frag-ile woman?” Please.

where it’s clear they are little more than sitting ducks.

The unit is led by a formi-dable peasant soldier, Maria Bochkareva, soulfully played by Maria Aronova.

The fi lm depicts the women as courageous and honoura-ble but also naive, easily manipulated and mostly incompetent on the battlefi eld (and in need of rescuing by their male compatriots).

It contrasts the battalion members’ deep care and re-spect for each other with how the unit is treated by the out-side world. At the front, the women are ridiculed, sexual-ly harassed and abused by

A photo-

graphic

exhibition

about the

making of

Territory

(2014), an

adventure

film set in

Russia's Far

North, will

be part of

the festival.

A scene

from the

New Year

family film

Yolki (2014)

– one of

four come-

dies being

shown as

part of this

year's festi-

val program.

Sydney – city

Oct 23 – Nov 4Event Cinemas505-525 George Street, Sydney › www.eventcinemas.com.au/

EventsFestivals/RussianFilmFestival

Sydney – Burwood

Oct 23 – Nov 4Event Cinemas – WestfieldBurwood Road, Burwood › www.eventcinemas.com.au/


Canberra

Nov 4 – 11Greater Union6 Franklin Street, Manuka › www.eventcinemas.com.au/


Melbourne

Nov 5 – 15ACMI Federation SquareFlinders Street, Melbourne › www.acmi.net.au/film/festivals/

For more details: › http://russianresurrection.com/2015/

sessions

CALENDAR

Festival venues

BattalionAudiences shouldn’t expect a feminist fi lm in Battalion ei-ther. Directed by Dmitry Meskhiev and produced by Fedor Bondarchuk – who made Stalingrad (2013) – Bat-talion tells the story of Rus-sia’s fi rst all-female military unit, set up as a propaganda tactic by the Provisional Gov-ernment in May 1917.

The unit was formed to shame war-weary male sol-diers into fi ghting, at a time when many were deserting.

The plot follows an ill-equipped group of hastily trained volunteers who are sent to the Belarussian front,

Russia's first all-women army unit was

formed in 1917 from volunteer recruits.

(Russian) male soldiers, and their vulnerability is empha-sised, particularly when the indestructible Bochkareva is horrifi cally publicly beaten by her husband.

While this isn’t a fi lm about women's liberation, it does tell an alternative narrative to your average Russian war fi lm. And it was a bold move by distributors to premiere the fi lm on the eve of the Defend-er of the Fatherland Day – a national holiday which tradi-tionally honours and cele-brates men in Russia.

Other films War movies aside, the program, which has 24 fi lms – 18 of them new releases – includes three thrillers, four dramas, four comedies and two children’s animations.

Maksymow said that while art house fi lms had once been a cornerstone of the festival, this year there was only one: The Guards (2015), about the speculation a security guard’s unplanned pregnancy attracts in a provincial steelworks town.

Maksymow said fewer indie fi lms were being made in Rus-sia, and that the trend there for churning out Hollywood-formula blockbusters was like-ly to continue.

He said this was because public funding for fi lm pro-duction had been reduced as a result of the rouble crisis and because a large chunk of the Ministry for Culture’s budget was now going to a fi lm stu-dio redevelopment in Crimea.

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MOST READ SYRIAN REBELS ASK US FOR ARMS TO FIGHT RUSSIA

asia.rbth.com/49841Syria crisis

PAVEL KOSHKINRUSSIA DIRECT

As Europe is responding to

its largest influx of refugees

in many years, the

weaknesses in Russia's

asylum-seeking processes

are becoming more evident.

SYRIANS FLEE CHAOS FOR A LIFE IN LIMBO

HAVING RECENTLY TAKEN IN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES

FROM EASTERN UKRAINE, RUSSIA SEEMS RELUCTANT TO DEAL WITH

NEW FLOWS OF LARGE NUMBERS OF REFUGEES FROM SYRIA

REFUGEES RED TAPE

Before the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Ahmad, a stout and robust-looking Syrian and Shia Muslim, lived in a town called Al-Malihah, six kilometres from Damascus.

Now Ahmad, 40, and his wife and two children live in a cosy apartment in south-west Moscow. When he saw bombs fl ying over his head and over the homes and schools of Al-Malihah, and witnessed peaceful civilians being killed, he quickly de-cided to leave Syria with his family.

“I didn’t care about my-self, but I did care about my family and wanted to find them a safe place,” he said in an interview. “So we came to Moscow and applied to the United Nations and they gave us letters of recommen-dation.”

Before the civil war, Ahmad had been working in differ-ent businesses and his wife was a teacher in Damascus.

In the bombings and shoot-ings which started in 2011 as the political situation became unstable, his poultry shop was destroyed and his property confi scated by radicals who viewed him as an infi del.

The family moved to Da-mascus, but then Damascus started being bombed as well. In 2013 they fled to Russia on tourist visas and were granted temporary asylum, which allowed Ahmad to

work. He was lucky enough to pick up a job in a Moscow restaurant. But last year, Rus-sia’s Federal Migration Ser-vice refused to renew Ah-mad’s temporary asylum status. This may have been infl uenced by Russia having to deal with a huge infl ux of refugees from eastern Ukraine at the time.

Ahmad is still living legal-ly in Russia and is waiting on a court decision about his refugee status.

Adjusting to life in Mos-

cow has been relatively smooth for Ahmad and his family. While he said that he and his wife didn’t speak Russian well, in two years his children had become fl uent and had made a lot of friends at school and in their neigh-bourhood.

“I respect Russians very much,” Ahmad said. “They are nice and friendly people.”

Ahmad’s main concern with life in Russia is not hav-

ing his documents in order. Because his refugee status

is in limbo, most of his offi-cial documents can’t be com-pleted. This means that his movement is restricted and he can’t work.

The Moscow office of the United Nations High Com-miss ion for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned Ahmad against doing any business in Russia without proper docu-mentation. It said the risk of being arrested would be high.

“My documents are a problem for me,” he said. “I want to get all my papers in order to be independent and to be able to live here like a normal person.

“I need stability. I want to do business here and provide safety and a decent future for my children. But without my documents being in order, there is no certainty at all. I can’t even access medical ser-vices if I have problems with my health.”

Ahmad admits the lack of certainty around these issues has been a psychological strain. If he could get asylum in Europe, or elsewhere, he would happily leave Russia.

At the same time, he wor-ries about being deported from Russia and the effect that would have on his chil-dren, who are well settled into their new environment.

Syrian refugees in Europe to doubleThere are almost 4.1 million Syrian refugees around the world today, with about 430,000 applications for ref-ugee status submitted in Eu-rope between 2011 and 2015.

According to the UNHCR

forecasts, in the next two years the number of Syrian refugees in Europe will dou-ble to about 850,000. Most of them will settle in Germany.

According to Russia’s Fed-eral Migration Service, 12,000 people have arrived in Rus-sia from Syria since 2011, but only 2000 of them have been successful in gaining tempo-rary asylum.

This number is small com-pared to the number of Syr-ian refugees in other Euro-pean countries.

For example, the number of Syrians who applied for refugee status from April 2011 to August 2015 in the following countries were: Germany: more than 100,000; Sweden: about 65,000; Hun-gary: about 54,000; Denmark: more than 12,000; UK: more than 7000; France: about 7000.

Russia's proposed new law on refugees In an interview with Russia Direct, Elena Burtina, depu-ty head of the Civil Assistance Committee on Refugees, said that current Russian legisla-tion was favourable to refu-gees. It provides scope for them to apply for asylum for a wide range of reasons.

These include domestic and international confl icts, fam-ines, epidemics, human-made catastrophes or any threat to their health, she said.

Despite this legislation, many refugees to Russia are not being granted temporary asylum or refugee status.

Burtina said this perceived reluctance to take refugees was a result of how policies were being implemented and not about the law.

However, a proposed new law on refugees which is in the early stages of develop-ment and discussion may se-riously change things.

Burtina had mixed feelings about the proposed legisla-tion. She said the new law could make it more difficult for refugees to get temporary asylum because only those at risk of torture, death or hu-man-rights abuses would be made eligible for the status of political refugee.

As well, under the new law, refugees could fi nd it more challenging to fi nd housing and would certainly have fewer opportunities to appeal court decisions about their refugee status.

DARYA LYUBINSKAYASPECIAL TO RBTH

Olga Nikolayenko, director of

a centre that assists refugee

children, spoke to RBTH

about the difficulties refugee

families can face in Russia.

Learning centre helps children to overcome hurdles

Families Helping to ease the transition

Created in 1996 by the pub-lic charity the Civic Assis-tance Committee, the Learn-ing Centre for Refugee Children in Moscow helps families deal with the prob-lems that new arrivals to Rus-sia typically face.

According to the centre’s director Olga Nikolayenko, it has 73 child students, most of them from Syria, Afghan-istan, the Congo and the for-mer Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, with smaller numbers from Ukraine and Yemen.

“We have a family from Afghanistan,” Nikolayenko

said. “Their father, Harun, fl ed to Russia after the Taliban killed his father and threat-ened the rest of the family.

“Harun has already been in Moscow for three years and hasn’t been able to get offi-cial status, so none of his nine children are able to study at Russian schools.”

Red-tape barriers and hav-ing the right documents can be major problems in Russia. This is an area where the cen-tre tries to assist parents, so that where possible the chil-dren can attend local schools.

Last month, two children, Marichal from Congo and Judd from Syria, were fi nal-ly accepted by a Russian school.

“We were so lucky,” Nikolayenko said. “It's a good private school with small classes. We managed to agree to pay very little for it.

“The principal sympa-

Last year, Russia's federal migration agency refused to renew his temporary asylum status

Ahmad fled to Russia on a tourist visa and was granted temporary asylum, which let him work

C O N V E R T I N G M O N O L O G U E S I N T O D I A L O G U E

RUSSIA DIRECT IS A FORUM FOR EXPERTS AND SENIOR RUSSIAN AND INTERNATIONAL DECISION-MAKERS TO DISCUSS, DEBATE AND UNDERSTAND ISSUES IN GEOPOLITICAL RELATIONS AT A SOPHISTICATED LEVEL.

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Despite the steepest drop in

incomes since 1998, Russians

remain optimistic, and Russian

President Vladimir Putin’s

approval ratings have rocketed.

As the “fat 2000s” have given way to the current

economic downturn, Russian society has somehow

swung from protest to civic apathy. Can this be

explained by domestic propaganda and the

authorities’ grip on public debate?

DECODING SOCIAL

TRANSFORMATIONS

IN RUSSIA

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MOST READ IS MOSCOW PLANNING GROUND OPERATIONS IN SYRIA?

asia.rbth.com/49869 Syria crisis

thised with us. And volun-teers helped collect the amount that was needed.

“Before this, Judd had been rejected by 16 schools. So he and his mother are very happy that he’s fi nally been accepted somewhere.”

Another barrier that refu-gee children often face at school is that they don’t speak Russian. For this reason, Rus-sian training at the centre starts very early – from pre-school age.

“The earlier the kids learn Russian, the more likely that they will speak it freely by the time they start school,” Nikolayenko said.

She added that refugee children sometimes struggle because they have had long absences from education or

are having difficulties adjust-ing to a new school system and curriculum.

So as well as Russian-lan-guage training, the children can study other school sub-jects at the centre.

Another core service of-fered by the centre is coun-selling.

“We have a psychologist, who helps children process the stresses associated with leaving their home country and adapting to a new coun-try,” Nikolayenko said.

She told us that Judd, aged 7, and his brother Moris, 5, seemed to have found the counselling helpful.

“Their mother Renee man-aged to escape from Syria a year and a half ago,” Nikolay-enko said. “The children

were traumatised and very shut down.

“Now, since they have been working with our psycholo-gist, they have really come out of their shells.”

She described how refu-gee children also often face xenophobia and intolerant attitudes in Russia, and how the psychologist helps them learn ways to cope with that.

The centre has many suc-cess stories. Aminat, for ex-ample, came to the centre in 2000, at the height of the sec-ond Chechen war.

“My sister learned English here, and I tagged along be-hind her,” Aminat said. "But not because of the lessons, be-cause it was interesting and I liked spending time here.

“There were a lot of good people at the centre – some of whom I still see now.”

Animat studied at the centre before going to the Russian State Humanitarian University. After she grad-uated, she returned to the centre where she now works as its administrator.

Another boy from Chechn-ya, Amirhan, went on to study in America with the help from the centre, and is now work-ing in the banking sector.

A girl from Tajikistan studied physics at the centre and now attends Baumanka (Bauman Moscow State Tech-nical University).

Vladimir

MikheevANALYST

cial status for Donetsk and Lugansk and guarantees on the observance of human rights for ethnic (Russian) mi-norities. Germany and France said the implementation of the Minsk agreements can be extended, giving all sides more breathing space.

So, is there a chance that putting the Donbass crisis on the back burner and achiev-ing a modest military success in Syria could set the stage for more meaningful co-operation between Russia and the Western powers?

Political analyst Sergei Stankevich, a senior expert with the Anatoly Sobchak Foundation says yes: “If Rus-sia shows readiness for a full political settlement in Syria, the West could accept her as a partner. If Russia limits its activity to military strikes, neglecting political dialogue, I’m afraid it could bring more tension in Russia-West relations.”

On the other hand, Stank-evich said that if we see a normalisation of the situation in Ukraine and the weaken-ing of ISIS in Syria as a re-sult of Russian military ac-tion, then we could expect the re-emergence of areas of co-operation with the West and the “de-escalation” of sanc-tions against Russia.

Moscow’s double-track policy seems to be aimed at slowly pressing for a politi-cal settlement in Ukraine and a political resolution to the civil war in Syria, based on the preservation of the regime in Damascus. Sergey Strokan also contrib-uted to this report

Russia’s air strikes on what it says are ISIS targets inside Syria have raised the

stakes in Moscow’s policy of engaging the West in what it claims is a joint fight against Islamic terrorists.

The heating up of the sit-uation in Syria has come as hostilities in eastern Ukraine appear to be cool-ing off – something which appears to be the result of efforts by the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia to ensure the im-plementation of the Minsk Peace Accords, which were signed back in February.

The summit between these four nations, which took place in Paris at the beginning of the month, was devoid of the usual name-and-blame rhetoric, with few, if any, accusations targeting Moscow as the apparent protector of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The discourse of the four leaders could be summed up by two points: “None of the articles of Minsk have been respected completely” (Ger-man Chancellor Angela Merkel) and some progress has been made on the mili-tary aspects of the accords (French President Francois Hollande).

But the key message of the summit was that there had been no sign of advance on a crucial element of the agreement: political reform. This would amount to amending the Ukrainian constitution to include spe-

OPINION

Ukraine conflict cooling while Syria overheats

See full report at

rbth.com/world/troika

12,000According to Russia’s FederalMigration Service, 12,000 people have arrived in Russia from Syria since 2011.

2000Only 2000 of them haveofficially been granted tempo-rary asylum – far fewer than in other European countries.

100,000From April 2011 to August 2015, Germany had more than 100,000 applications from asylum seekers from Syria.

IN NUMBERS

" Refugees should be helped by all leading European countries. [...]

[The refugees] should get the opportunity to work, to live a decent life and to be integrated into society. But the main thing that the West should do is bring an end to war in the regions that people are fleeing from. Otherwise, flows of angry and hungry migrants will deprive Europe of peace."

" I have no doubt that Europe will cope with the current wave of

migration and make the right conclusions about how to act in such critical situations for the future. [...] But to say exactly where and how to use the refugees who arrived in Europe is impossible now – structure, language training and [the] professional competence of these people are unknown."

" This should be done by the EU leadership in Brussels, it has

enough authority to cope with it. It must explain to its countries that the EU is not paradise on earth, and cloudy weather happens there, too. There is now a 'storm' over Europe such as had not occurred for 25 years. These are the crises in Ukraine and Greece, the possible withdrawal of the UK from the EU, and now refugees. The EU can cope with this only by acting together."

QUOTES

Adam Hanna

Vladimir Gimpelson

Alexander Rahr

A SYRIAN REFUGEE, SPEAKING TO

KOMMERSANT.RU

DIRECTOR, CENTRE FOR LABOUR STUDIES,

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

GERMAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST, IN AN

INTERVIEW TO KOMMERSANT.RU

Some Syrian refugees

have been using Russia

as a stepping-stone for

travelling to Europe, while

others have applied for

official asylum status.

The centre offers school subjects as well as language lessons.

Convert ing monologues in to d ia logue

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MOST READ IMPROVING EDUCATION FOR ALL RUSSIANS

asia.rbth.com/49291Education

GLEB FEDOROVRBTH

The achievements of

Russian universities in

the 2015-16 Times

Higher Education World

University Rankings

are their best yet.

Russian unis start to make global mark

Higher education Investment efforts rewarded with international recognition

Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) was ranked 161 out of 800 in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2015-16, released this month.

Thirteen Russian academ-ic institutions made this year’s list, compared to just two in 2014-15. MSU was once again ranked highest of the Russian universities.

Last year, MSU was ranked 196 out of 400 (the 2015-16 list was expanded to 800). The only other Russian universi-ty in the list last year was Novosibirsk State University, ranked 301 of 350. This year, it fell to 401 of 500.

In the 2015-16 rankings, the Russian top fi ve also in-cluded Peter the Great St Pe-

tersburg Polytechnic Univer-sity (201 of 250), Tomsk Polytechnic University (251 of 300), Kazan Federal Uni-versity (301 of 350) and the National Nuclear Research University MePhi (301 of 350).

“It’s great that Russia has 13 institutions in this list, with fi ve of its universities sitting in the top 400,” said Phil Baty, THE rankings ed-itor. “Russia has made huge efforts to improve its higher education system in recent years, including the launch of its Project 5-100 initiative.”

Baty said Russia would have to continue to work hard

to compete with China and other global rivals who, he said, “are also investing heav-ily in higher education”.

Russian Deputy Minister of Education Alexander Pov-alko praised the fact that more Russian universities were in the rankings and said he was hopeful of even bet-ter results next year.

“Universities are investing in their scientific research base and are recruiting the best people to enhance their international competitive-ness,” Povalko told RBTH.

Novosibirsk State Univer-sity (NSU) Rector Michael

Fedoruk said his university has been rising in the rank-ing by subject category be-cause of the quality of its fun-damental research work. He attributed the fall in its gen-eral ranking to a change in the methodology used.

Nikolai Kudryavtsev, Rec-tor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) also noted the change in methodology and added that this year THE apparent-ly did not take into account scientific publications that have many co-authors.

According to both rectors, when it comes to physics, it is also impossible to under-take fundamental research with a small group of scien-tists. Substantial investment and large teams are required.

Another hurdle for Russian specialised universities such as NSU and MIPT is the lim-ited number of humanitarian courses they offer.

“We only have three spe-cialisations at our institute: physics, mathematics and in-formatics,” Kudryavtsev said. “This makes it very hard for us to deliver better results in the general rankings.”

A factor in the success of Russian universities was their cooperation with internation-al and Russian companies such as Boeing, Siemens and Uralwagonzavod.

Peter the Great St Peters-burg Polytechnic University, which built the best univer-sity engineering centre in Russia, cooperates with com-panies like Porsche.

“Our research in the fi eld of innovation is used in ship-building, aircraft building, aviation and transport sys-tems,” Rector Andrei Rudskoy told RBTH.

THE World University Rankings

161 Lomonosov Moscow State University201-250 Peter the Great St Pe-tersburg Polytechnic University251-300 Tomsk Polytechnic University301-350 Kazan Federal Univer-

sity and the National Nuclear Research University MePhi401-500 Novosibirsk State University and St Petersburg State University501-600 Bauman Moscow State Technical University

601-800 Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology,the National University of Sci-ence and Technology MISIS in Moscow, the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don,Tomsk State University and the Ural Federal University in Yekaterinburg.

ALEXEI STROGANOVSPECIAL TO RBTH

Reforms in school funding in

Moscow, which aim to cater

for increasing demand and

more evenly distribute

resources to students, have

been unpopular with parents.

Schools Demand stretches resources

When it was announced in 2012 that School 122 in cen-tral Moscow would be merged with another school, parents were up in arms.

The school, home to the Moscow Boys Cappella, is one of the few places outside Rus-sia’s music conservatories where students can do course work towards a special diploma in music.

Parents were afraid not only that the merger would result in the loss of the music course but also, as one par-ent said, that it would “destroy the school’s unique culture”.

The school was slated for consolidation under a con-troversial federal policy, in-troduced in 2010, to merge small and under-performing schools with larger ones, pri-marily to distribute fi nancial and administrative resources more evenly.

Under the policy, funding for schools would be distrib-uted on a per capita basis – a move officials said was necessary to accommodate an increase in demand.

“In our very large country, it is essential to ensure equal access to early-childhood ser-vices as much as possible, and supplementary education,” said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, defending the changes, which went into effect from January, 2011.

Russia experienced a small baby boom with the econom-ic prosperity of the early 2000s. Russia’s state statis-tics service, Rosstat, reported

Moscow school mergers meet parent protests

a steady increase in births from 2007 to 2012. In Mos-cow, 101,000 children were born in 2007. By 2012, that number had risen to more than 134,000.

While some schools in the centre of Moscow are under-subscribed, schools are over-crowded in Moscow’s dormi-tory suburbs – high-density and high-rise housing areas on the outskirts of the city.

Parents at Intellectual, a state-run boarding school for gifted students in western Moscow, took to the streets to protest against the merger and expansion of their school, which previously had a stu-dent-teacher ratio of 2-1.

Moscow Deputy Mayor Le-onid Pechatnikov responded in an interview with Russian daily Kommersant that if the parents wanted to keep that level of staffing, they would have to pay for the extra salaries themselves.

“We can’t afford to allocate 378,000 roubles ($A8250) per student,” he said. “Two stu-dents for one teacher is, in fact, a system of tutoring. We have a law on universal edu-cation, but we don’t have a law on universal tutoring.”

The average amount spent per student in Moscow schools today is 63,000 rou-bles ($A1375).

School 122’s merger went ahead two years ago with new administration, but students stayed in the same building and the music curriculum continues.

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ANDREI RETINGERSPECIAL TO RBTH

Last month, construction

work began on what Russia's

nuclear energy corporation

Rosatom says will be the

world's most powerful fast

neutron research reactor.

Russia aims to spearhead nuclear power development Energy Rosatom is building a super-fast reactor to be 'the reactor for the world's nuclear energy industry of the future'

ic research. It plans to set up a centre there called the In-ternational Research Centre, which will explore new types of nuclear fuel, construction materials and heat-transfer fl uids. The reactor will also be used in the production of radioisotopes for various pur-poses, including for medical research.

According to Vyacheslav Pershukov, Rosatom’s depu-ty director-general and the director of the Innovation Management Bloc, scientists from France, South Korea, Japan and China are inter-ested in working on MBIR.

“MBIR will significantly reduce the time of develop-ment for new fuels and struc-tural materials needed for the global nuclear power indus-

MBIR is the name of a new nuclear reactor being built in Dimitrovgrad, a town 970 kilometres from Moscow.

Rosatom plans to have the $US1 billion reactor up and running by 2020. It says the new reactor will have ther-mal power of 150MW, 2.5 times more than the most powerful nuclear reactors in Russia today – BOR-60s, built almost half a century ago.

Rosatom hopes that MBIR will become a hub for atom-

atomic energy expert Alex-ander Uvarov said. “In this respect, the MBIR project re-sembles such major projects as the ISS.”

Pershukov said preliminary

talks had already been held with technology companies and large research centres: “They’re all interested in conducting research at the new reactor.”

There are virtually no com-parable projects in the world to the MBIR.

The European MYRRHA is still at the draft stage. The Chinese CEFR is a demon-stration, not a research reac-tor. The Indian FBTR works for the needs of the national program and is not available for third-party customers. The American FFTF has been closed and is already partial-ly dismantled.

The Japanese fast reactors JOYO and Monju are current-ly not operational as a result of accidents and court cases. Their futures are uncertain, in part because of the re-examination and re-regula-tion of Japan’s atomic energy industry after the Fukushima tsunami disaster.

SVETLANA ARKHANGELSKAYASPECIAL TO RBTH

Scientists monitoring seismic

activity off the coast of

Russia’s Far East expect

powerful earthquakes to

hit the region as soon as

next year.

Major quakes may hit the Far East, say researchers

Seismology Grim predictions

In recent years virtually no seismic activity has been re-corded in parts of Russia’s Far East, in the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Penin-sula. For Russian seismolo-gists, this lack of activity is a cause of serious concern.

“The past year and the six preceding years have been very calm for seismic activ-ity," Ivan Tikhonov told RBTH in an interview.

Tikhonov is the head of the seismology laboratory at the Institute of Marine Geology and Geophysics in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the capital of Russia’s Far Eastern region of Sakhalin.

“A quiet period like this means that enormous amounts of energy have been accumulating below the sur-face,” he said. “And this pent-u p e n e rg y c o u l d s e t off several powerful earth-quakes.”

Tikhonov said he expect-ed large quakes in the region in the next 18 months.

He believes an earthquake of at least 8.0 on the Richter

Earthquakes have been forecast for the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin some time in the next 18 months.

ods are considered the most efficient because the greater the time frame, the lower the likelihood of errors.

“Research on short-term earthquake forecast methods is also under way in the US, Japan, New Zealand and Switzerland in the framework of the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP),” said Vladimir Kosobokov, an expert at the European Advisory Committee on Earthquake Prediction. “But these methods have yet to prove their effectiveness.”

Kosobokov also doubts that the research by the Tikhonov team will yield any useful re-sults.

The new method reported-ly uses a mathematical algo-rithm based on a non-linear differential equation devel-oped by Russian scientist Al-exander Malyshev.

So far, it has only been used with earthquake data from Russia, Japan and Turkey.

Forecasts aid

rescue teams

The most unstable regions at risk

The Expert Board for Earth-quake Prediction and Seismic Hazard Assessment sends its earthquake predic-tions to EMERCOM, the Russian state emergency services agency. In 2005, thanks to one such reliable forecast in the Kamchatka Pen-insula, EMERCOM deployed a rescue team that was prepared to act in the event of an earth-quake in the region.

More than 8000 earthquakes of varying magnitude are detect-ed in Russia each year. More than half occur near the Kuril Islands and Kamchatka. The rest strike in the Kola Peninsula, the Kaliningrad region, Crimea,

scale is likely to hit near Urup Island in the southern part of the Kuril Islands somewhere between January 2016 and February 2017.

Urup was at the epicentre of the seismically quiet zone, Tikhonov said.

He also said that a 7.7-mag-nitude earthquake is expect-ed to hit near the northern Kuril Islands before 2018, and that a quake of 6.0 or 7.0 magnitude may hit the south-ern part of Sakhalin Island before the end of next spring.

These forecasts have been made using no fewer than eight earthquake-prediction methodologies.

One of them is the LURR theory (Load/Unload Re-sponse Ratio), developed by Chinese seismologists. The theory takes into account the impact of the gravitational forces of the sun and moon on the Earth’s crust.

Another method used is the Seismic Gaps Hypothesis, put forward by Japanese seismol-ogist Kiyoo Mogi.

Mogi noted that the epi-

the Caucasus, the Urals, West-ern Siberia, the Altai and the Sayan mountains, the Prib-aykalsky and Zabaykalsky dis-tricts, Sakhalin Island, the Com-mander islands, the Republic of Yakutia and the Arctic regions.

Tikhonov said he expected large quakes in the region in the next 18 months

centres of powerful earth-quakes have usually had no seismic activity leading up to the quake.

All the methods used to date confi rm the grim fore-casts, although the seismol-ogists admit that there is always the possibility of error.

“Earthquakes originate from deep beneath the Earth’s crust, and scientists only have surface observa-tions to work with,’’ said Mikhail Rodkin of Russia’s Institute of Earthquake Pre-diction Theory and Mathe-matical Geophysics.

“It’s a little bit as though meteorologists only had data collected from wormholes.”

Over the past 20 years, a research group led by Tik-honov has been working on a fundamentally new meth-od of short-term earthquake prediction, and their studies have yielded some interest-ing results.

“Our method allows for the detection of imminent

earthquakes – ones that will occur within several days,” Tikhonov said.

Although he said the meth-od developed by his team yielded very few false alarms, he emphasised that it should be used in conjunction with other medium-term predic-tion methods.

The method developed by Tikhonov’s team only takes into account seismic data from up to 24 hours before a quake, so there is not much time for authorities and residents to take action in response.

Long-term forecast meth-

try of the future,” Pershukov said. “We’ve never had a re-actor like this before.

“It is the reactor for the world’s nuclear energy indus-try of the future.

“The greater the power of the reactor, the faster we get results. If we were using the standard low-power reactors operating in the world today, research would take decades. The MBIR reactor will let us do the research three to four times faster.”

In terms of its signifi cance for the global nuclear energy industry, the MBIR has been compared to the Internation-al Space Station (ISS).

“Russia invites states in-terested in developing their nuclear energy programs to participate in this project,”

Rosatom says MBIR will accelerate atomic energy research.

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10 REASONS YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER VISIT MOSCOWasia.rbth.com/multimedia/394137

FIVE TIPS ON NEGOTIATING WITH POLAR BEARS

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A wildlife survey last winter in the forests of Russia’s Far East revealed that there were only 523 to 540 tigers left in the area, about the same number as a decade ago.

A move to halt the decline of tigers in the Far East was largely a result of conserva-tionists lobbying the govern-ment to change legislation and introduce new approach-es to conservation. These efforts were helped by Rus-sian President Vladimir Putin taking a personal interest in protecting tigers in 2008.

RBTH spoke with Pavel Fomenko, species program co-ordinator at WWF Russia’s Amur branch, and Sergei Ar-amilev, director of the Amur Tiger Centre in Vladivostok, about what is being done to help protect the Amur tiger.

1. Introduce strong lawsA law was introduced in Rus-sia in 2013 which made keep-ing tiger body parts illegal. Violations can result in large fi nes and even imprisonment.

2. Protect tiger habitatLaws should not just protect the tiger but also the forests where they live and prey. The Amur tigers’ habitat is about 160,000 square kilometres. The oak and cedar forests are protected by government authorities which manage forests and hunting.

Local police also look out

for the illegal felling of trees and poaching of tigers and other animals. The Ministry of Emergency Situations helps put out fi res.

3. Treat wounded tigersIn the Pr imorye and Khabarovsk territories, the government agency which manages hunting has creat-ed special groups for dealing with tigers if they have had violent encounters with hu-mans. If a tiger is wounded or sick, she or he will be put into a rehabilitation centre and after treatment returned to the wild, if possible.

4. Dispel unhelpful myths Statistics show that tigers don’t seek out confrontations with humans, and in the over-whelming number of cases humans are responsible for violent encounters with them.

To make the image of the tiger less frightening, the city of Vladivostok started cele-brating Tiger Day each year, while the popular children's program Good Night, Little Ones! has created an Amur tiger cub character.

5. Monitor tiger numbersEvery decade, a detailed sur-vey is undertaken into Amur tiger numbers. The organisa-tion and scale of the survey is like a military operation and takes nearly six months. Only qualified specialists (scientists and professional hunters) take part.

The information gathered is essential for developing and adjusting conservation meas-ures, not only for tigers but for other endangered species, such as the Amur leopard.

As well, an annual survey

is performed in a sample area of just a quarter of the Amur tigers’ habitat.

6. Rehabilitate tiger cubs Tigresses don’t teach their cubs how to hunt, they raise them until they are old enough to hunt on their own.

In Russia, it is not common to raise tiger cubs in captiv-ity and return them to the wild. It has proved easier and more cost-effective to focus on the preservation of the existing wild population.

If orphaned tiger cubs are found, they are rehabilitated before being released. The main aim of rehabilitation is to teach them to be afraid of human domestic activity and humans in general.

Only then are they likely to survive in the wild.

GLEB FEDOROVRBTH

Experts on tiger conservation

speak to RBTH about the

strategies which are proving

effective in protecting the

small Amur tiger population

in the forests of the Far East.

Conservationists fight to save the tigersEndangered species Strategic approach in the Far East aims to protect the small Amur tiger population from further decline

GLEB FEDOROVRBTH

If you've ever wondered what

you should do if you come

across a tiger, here are some

expert tips. They may come

in handy if you ever travel to

Russia's Far East.

How to behave when you run into a tiger

Don't even think about: 1. This may seem obvious, but never try to take food away from a tiger – this is will certainly make it unhappy with you. 2. Don’t even try running away from a tiger. They are very curious animals, and running will only encourage

them to follow or chase you. Besides, you’re not going to be able to outrun it. 3. Just as with other preda-tors, never look a tiger in the eye – it may scare them and provoke an attack.4. If you come across tiger cubs, don’t touch them. Their mother is likely to be nearby, and a tigress with cubs is even more dangerous than a wounded tiger.5. Don’t shoot tigers. Apart from the fact that it’s a crime in many countries, including Russia, your chances of kill-ing it are low. You will defi -nitely attract its attention.

Instead, try these:1. If there are any signs of a tiger nearby – a fresh foot-print or the sound of a roar – turn back and try to leave the area. If a tiger is near a populated location, call the police. 2. If you actually see a tiger, stop and wait for it to go away. Tigers usually go out of their way to avoid humans, so most encounters, if they do happen, don’t usually last more than a few seconds.3. Try to make yourself look bigger than you are. For instance, you could raise your backpack above your head. If there are other people with you, you could hug them to make yourself look like one large creature to the tiger. 4. Speak to the tiger in a loud and calm voice.5. Tigers are scared of fi re and arc fl ashes. So if you happen to be carrying a fl are, and the tiger is closer than 15 metres from you, light it. 6. If you have something you can throw, throw it, aiming at the space between you and the tiger. Don’t try to hit the tiger, as this also will make it unhappy with you. 7. Unnatural loud noises that aren’t found in nature may scare the tiger away. Clapping won’t work, but some music or banging metal on metal may frighten them.

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