The Moscow Times: A Mass Mailing of Khodorkovsky Chocolate and Mittens

The Jamestown Foundation: Au Pays des Lumieres: Gazprom’s Partner Eutelsat Disconnects Georgian TV Channel

February 3, 2010 04:19 PM Age: 9 hrs

Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vlad’s Corner, Home Page, Energy, Russia, Europe, Georgia

By: Vladimir Socor

On February 1, the Paris-based Eutelsat, Europe’s number one satellite television operator, disconnected Georgian Public Broadcaster’s First Caucasus TV Channel from its satellite, after a one-week successful transmission test. Eutelsat also declared that it was backing out of its own contract offer to the Georgian channel, which the latter had already signed. Eutelsat’s satellite was beaming Georgian First Caucasus TV’s broadcasts to Russia’s North Caucasus territories.

Eutelsat says in justification that it has signed a more profitable contract for the same spectrum of frequencies with Russia’s Intersputnik, to transmit television programs for Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the Russian gas monopoly (Le Figaro, January 27; Agence France Presse, February 1).

First Caucasus (Pervyi Kavkazsky, or “1-K”) is the first TV news channel attempting to dent the monopoly of Russian state-controlled television in the North Caucasus. It would seem that Eutelsat helps Russia’s gas monopoly to help the Russian authorities’ TV monopoly in the country. Conversely, satellite transmissions of Russian state-controlled television channels have all along been available in Georgia without restrictions.

A project of Georgian Public TV in Tbilisi, First Caucasus TV employs journalists with roots in North Ossetia, Dagestan, Chechenia, Ingushetia, and other North Caucasus territories, as well as Russians. Broadcasting in Russian, the channel operates on a shoestring funding of $1.5 million, authorized for 2010, out of the Georgian public broadcaster’s budget. First Caucasus TV’s star attractions include Oleg Panfilov, the internationally respected head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Hardship Conditions (formerly based in Moscow) and Alla Dudayeva, widow of the late Chechen leader Jokhar Dudayev, herself an artist, who draws the interviewees’ portraits during talk shows and displays the portraits at the end.

First Caucasus TV had started experimental broadcasts on January 15 and was scheduled to start the regular broadcasts via satellite on February 1 (Civil Georgia, January 29-31). The channel’s parent company, Georgian Public Broadcaster, is now suing Eutelsat in commercial court in Paris.

Eutelsat was transmitting First Caucasus TV programs through the W-7 satellite during the week-long successful test. Eutelsat’s final contract offer, officially accepted by the Georgian side, presupposed continued use of the same satellite for at least one year. Immediately afterward, however, Eutelsat claimed that it had contracted with Intersputnik for transmission of Gazprom Media programs over a wide spectrum of frequencies, for the next fifteen years –the satellite’s service lifetime. While Eutelsat claims that it signed the Russian contract on January 15 (the day after the official acceptance from Tbilisi), Gazprom Media claims that it had contracted for those frequencies in March 2009 on the W-7 satellite, which started operating in November 2009.

According to the Georgian side, Eutelsat invoked other excuses (first the programs’ content, then the risk of hacking) before canceling outright in favor of Gazprom. Whichever is true, Eutelsat now claims that its arrangement with Gazprom Media has left insufficient satellite capacity to service the First Caucasus Channel, Eutelsat claims (Interfax, February 2; Sophie Shihab, La television georgienne et les diktats de la censure russe [Georgian TV and the orders of Russian censorship],” Le Monde, February 3).

Apparently contrary to its own prior commitment, Eutelsat now offers to transmit First Caucasus TV programs through the W-2a satellite. However, this satellite covers the North Caucasus only partially. Moreover, the W-2a does not carry the most popular international channels, which means that very few, if any, North Caucasus residents possess or might buy the necessary satellite dish and antennae. And anyone having that equipment installed would risk being quickly indentified by local Russian security services as a viewer of the “dissident” First Caucasus TV.

The issue of First Caucasus Channel’s access to Russia in the television age recalls the issue of Radio Liberty’s access to Soviet audiences during the radio era. In both cases, the offer involves an alternative to Kremlin-controlled, censored and biased media. Audiences are offered a choice while the authorities struggle to maintain a monopoly on news and interpretation. In both cases again, the authorities sponsoring alternative broadcasting are concerned with the international security implications of Kremlin control over public opinion and enemy-image formation. This generates internal public support for Moscow’s conflict undertakings abroad. Prior to the August 2008 war, Georgia (along with the Baltic States) topped the list of countries viewed negatively by a Russian public under the impact of state-controlled television.

Soviet authorities had jammed Radio Liberty overtly and defended the jamming officially. Russian authorities, it seems, can resort to more sophisticated methods with the help of commercial partners, Western ones apparently in this case.

The government initiative, which was announced in the spring of 2006 by then-President Vladimir Putin, promises nearly $10,000 (300,000 rubles) to each woman who gives birth to her second, (or consecutive) child between 2007 and 2016. 

The money, which is distributed after the child's third birthday, may be spent three ways - 1) apply it towards a home loan, 2) pay for the child's education, or 3) add it to the mother's pension fund. 

Since Maria's family already owns a flat, and she is nearly twenty years from retiring, she chose the third option - paying for education. 

Last fall, amidst the financial crisis, Prime Minister Putin allowed for the voucher to be used before the child's third birthday, so long as the money is spent on property purchases.  He also allowed a small sum - $400 (12,000 rubles) - to be taken out in cash, for so-called "urgent needs."

Twenty-seven year old Svetlana was able to immediately take advantage of that provision, just a few months after giving birth to her twin daughters.  Her family needed exactly 300,000 rubles to pay off their mortgage.

The original sum promised to mothers had been 250,000 rubles, but it was adjusted at the end of 2008 to account for inflation. Each family is eligible for only one voucher.

The idea for these maternity fund vouchers was the result of a series of social welfare committee meetings, during which it was decided that women across the country need a financial incentive to have more children. 

At the beginning of this century, Russia's birthrate was alarmingly low - with the average family only having one child.  Russia's demographic crisis has been exacerbated, not only because of low birth rates, but also high death rates.  According to Russia's National Census, in 2004 there were, on average, three live births and four deaths every minute.

In 2002, scientists studying population patterns announced that Russia as a nation was dying out. The death rate that year was nearly twice as high as the birth rate:  232,200 deaths to only 139,700 live births. 

In September of last year, Tatiana Golikova, Minister of Health and Social Development, said that for the first time in 15 years, Russia experienced a natural population increase of 1,000 people the previous month. It may be overly optimistic to say that this slight population growth is linked to the federal program. True data will not be available for several more years.

So how does a family go about getting that money?

Officials say the process for receiving the vouchers is not overly bureaucratic. According to the website for the Department of Youth and Social Policy, a mother must simply go to her local pension fund office with her child's birth certificate, her passport, and a written request to receive the voucher.  Within one to two months, the money should arrive. 

Parents living in Moscow agree the procedure is not complicated.  Thirty-five year old Alexei Shmitov is a father of two.  "The money was in our Sberbank account a little less than two months after we filed the necessary paperwork."  Alexei's family took 12,000 rubles in cash, while using the rest to pay off their mortgage.

There are some families still unsure of how to use the money. Thirty-three year old Oksana is one of them. "Our flat is paid off, I don't have much faith in the pension system, and what it will have to offer in over 20 year.  My kids' schooling doesn't cost anything yet, so, I'm a bit at loss."

Despite the government's assurances that the process would be speedy and the bureaucracy would be minimal, some parents outside of Moscow have encountered problems with their local banks.  Lilya Ushakova, a Samara resident is a mother of two children under the age of five.  She is struggling with her local lender, Delta Credit bank, to accept her maternity capital voucher. She says she's been told by the bank that they have not received proper instructions from the Central Bank on how to accommodate her.  

Delta Credit representative declined to comment on an individual case, but stated that the bank follows the official procedures when handling maternity fund issues.

The maternity fund measure was developed well before the financial crisis, and also well before the federal budget went into the red.  One question now worth asking: will the Russian government be able to sustain this program for the entire nine years?  

According to the Health and Social Development Ministry, there were just over 1.6 million children born in 2007. And in 2008 that number went up by 6% to 1.7 million. RIA Novosti reports that is the highest birth rate in all the post-Soviet years.  

If even we assume that half of those babies were second (or subsequent) children in the family, this program would set the federal government back $8 billion in the first year of the program alone.

The federal budget earmarks $4.4 billion  (132 billion rubles) for the maternity payments, so the money exists - at least on paper - to fund this program for the time being.