Greenpeace team in Russian court

26 September 2013 Last updated at 09:33 GMT The Greenpeace activists were brought to court in police vans A Russian court is meeting to rule on whether 30 Greenpeace activists should stay in custody pending an inquiry into their actions during an oil protest.

Activists were ferried to the courthouse in police vans in Murmansk, a port city north of the Arctic Circle.

Coastguards arrested the activists on suspicion of piracy after two scaled an offshore drilling platform.

Greenpeace says the campaigners, who are from 18 countries, were staging a legal, peaceful protest.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the activists are obviously "not pirates" but did not criticise their continued detention.

The charge of piracy carries a prison term of up to 15 years in Russia.

Thursday's proceedings in Murmansk's Lenin district court were broadcast live by TV teams which crowded into the small courtroom.

Greenpeace says that all of the activists have now been questioned in the presence of lawyers. Relatives of some of them told the BBC on Tuesday that they had spoken to them and they were all being well treated.

The BBC's Daniel Sandford: "This is the first time that Greenpeace have found themselves at the criminal end of the piracy law"

The drama began a week ago, when two activists successfully climbed on to the side of a platform operated by Gazprom, Russia's state gas monopoly.

They were detained after a short skirmish in inflatable dinghies in which armed Russian FSB officers in balaclavas fired warning shots into the water.

The ship, the Arctic Sunrise, with all its crew was then towed to Murmansk.

Russia views its huge fossil fuel deposits under the Arctic as vital to its economic future, which is why it takes any threat to their exploitation very seriously, the BBC's Daniel Sandford reports from Moscow.

The campaigners on the ship are from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, New Zealand, Russia, the UK and the US, Greenpeace said.

View the original article here

Russian tourists help Hungary spa town flourish amid crisis

1 of 6. A woman enjoys the sun at the thermal water spa in Hungarian town of Heviz, 194 km (120 miles) west of Budapest, April 20, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Bernadett Szabo

By Krisztina Than

HEVIZ, Hungary | Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:03am EDT

HEVIZ, Hungary (Reuters) - A former Soviet military airport in western Hungary where MIG fighter jets landed for decades when Hungary was under Soviet rule is now receiving a different type of Russian visitor - tourists arriving in charter flights.

Locals have welcomed the new Russian "invasion" of tourists who fly into Sarmellek to head to the spa town Heviz, saying they have brought money, new jobs, and even boosted the moribund real estate market during a deep, economic downturn.

While some former eastern bloc countries still resent the former overlord of ex-communist eastern Europe, residents of Heviz say the ill feelings towards Russia are long gone.

"How could we have a problem? We welcome all foreigners ... I once learned Russian but unfortunately I have forgotten most of it," said Eva Virt, who works in a clothes shop in the town.

Alongside regular flights from Germany, every Sunday two charter flights come from Moscow to Sarmellek where the derelict Soviet air base has been converted into a small commercial airport.

The huge concrete buildings that once housed Soviet troops are empty and overgrown with weeds, with only a few Russian school books scattered in the former school reminiscent of a past era. Russian troops left Hungary in 1991.

Tourist Lyudmilla Ilyina, who used to live in Hungary under the communist regime, said she had come to try the lake in Heviz, Europe's largest thermal lake whose waters are known for healing powers and attract German, Dutch and Austrian tourists.

"A long time ago, in my youth, I lived in Hungary for three years and it is very nice to fly back to see what's changed," she said after stepping off the plane.

Gabor Papp, the mayor of Heviz, said the surge in Russian visitors had helped boost tourism revenue despite the economic crisis. The municipality is the official operator of the airport which it wants to develop.

"In that period, 20 to 30 to 35 years ago, this airport had a different function and we lived in a different world. Since then the world has changed ... and our goal is to make this airport serve the western region of Hungary," he said.

THE RETURN OF THE RUSSIANS

The influx of Russian tourists to Heviz got a boost in 2010 when the 'Arab Spring' protests scared tourists away from destinations such as Egypt, said Laszlo Konnyid, manager of a four-star hotel, which operates with room occupancy rates at 75 percent all year around, well above the national average.

"We like the Russians for many reasons but why we value them especially is that they cherish the traditional medical treatment ... in Heviz that was developed after 1769 by local doctors," he said.

The spa town, with a population of 5,000, recorded more than one million guest nights last year which made it the second most visited destination in Hungary after the capital Budapest.

Nikolai Azorsky, 50, from Kharkiv in Ukraine, has returned to Heviz for a second time after a visit in October which he said helped to heal his shoulders and knees.

"The lake is very unique, the water is warm and it has some kind of magic," he said.

In ex-communist eastern Europe, Russian tourists have also rediscovered Bulgaria with the number of visitors there rising 31 percent last year to almost 600,000.

In the last quarter of 2012, the number of Russian tourists to the Czech Republic jumped by 24 percent to 173,000 and they are now the second biggest group behind the Germans.

Heviz businesses have welcomed Russians, many of whom are willing and able to spend big, with the town now home to some luxury shops.

"It has happened many times that we dressed up (a lady) and we wanted to put beautiful ... jewelry on her neck and she said she would only wear diamonds," said Agnes Kanizsai, who opened a clothes shop last year and plans to sell diamonds as well.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

View the original article here