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The Moscow Times was the only newspaper represented at the Russian-American Business Summit, which participated in by Dmitry Medvedev and Barak Obama

On 7 July 2009 The Moscow Times published a special full colour issue of the newspaper, timed to coincide with the visit of Barak Obama to Moscow.

The newspaper was presented at the Russian-American Business Summit, which was organized by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) at Manezh. The forum drew the participation of more than 700 key representatives of Russian and international business, the political elite and non-governmental organizations.



Friday, July 10, 2009 Updated at 10 July 2009 0:46 Moscow Time.

The Moscow Times » Issue 2928 » Crime

Self-Defense Gets a Little Easier

27 May 2004By Carl Schreck / The Moscow TimesVyacheslav Korsakin turned around and saw the man pointing a loaded handgun straight at him. A few minutes later, four men were dead with gunshot wounds in Korsakin's apartment in southwest Moscow. Korsakin was not one of them.

Korsakin had invited the four men to his apartment as prospective tenants on Nov. 19, 2002, after making their acquaintance at the Shangri La casino near Pushkin Square.

City Crime Statistics
May 19 - May 25
Crime	Total	Solved
Murder	15	7
Assault	27	17
Robbery	327	132
Rape	6	4
Theft (total)	1,059	295
Apartment burglaries	238	18
Car theft	82	3
For the Record
Car accidents	120
a) killed	16
b) injured	84
Suicides	30
Missing persons	60
Bodies discovered	28
Source: Moscow police

One of the men mentioned he was living in a decrepit flat, so Korsakin offered to rent him the spare apartment he owned at 16 Novocheryomushkinskaya Ulitsa. In fact, Korsakin told them, they could take off from the casino immediately and go have a look at the place.

But things turned ugly when they arrived at the apartment. It turned out the would-be tenants were setting their host up.

They began threatening Korsakin and demanding money from him, and trying to avoid any violence, Korsakin went to retrieve the money to hand over.

That's when he heard a click from behind: a clip being shoved into a gun. When Korsakin turned around and saw one of the men pointing the gun at him, he wrestled it away, cocked it and shot and killed the man. He then grabbed several clips from off the dead man's body, loaded the gun and went room to room, emptying successive clips into the unfriendly guests.

That's what Korsakin told jurors in his December trial. He was facing four counts of murder and one count of illegal possession of a firearm, which could have landed him in prison for life.

But the jurors cleared Korsakin of any wrongdoing. According to the Dec. 24 verdict, Korsakin had merely acted within reasonable bounds to protect his life.

The acquittal follows the spirit of a new era in self-defense law. On Dec. 16, a significant addition to Article 37 of the Criminal Code came into effect that effectively justifies any means of self-defense necessary in surprise attacks.

"Actions taken by a person in self-defense are not considered excessive force if this person, as a result of being encroached upon unexpectedly, was unable to objectively evaluate the degree and character of the danger of the attack," the addition reads.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Korsakin's lawyer, Sergei Zamyatin, praised the law.

"This is definitely a step forward," Zamyatin said. "A person should have the right to defend himself, his property and his close ones by any means."

Zamyatin said the change will not necessarily make life easier for lawyers trying to clear their clients of murder charges. "But it does give us a wider base to build the case that a defendant had no other choice," he said.

The new legislation coincides with another notable trend in self-defense, namely the addition in February of rubber-pellet guns, including the popular OSA model, to a list of weapons, that can be legally used in self-defense.

Whether such weapons are improving civilian safety, however, is another question.

At a news conference last month, police spokesman Kirill Mazurin said that most of the public are ill-prepared to use rubber-pellet guns as a means of self-defense.

"People buy guns but rarely take lessons in how to use them properly," Mazurin said. "It's better to learn martial arts. Guns rarely help, especially in a sudden attack. If two guys come up to you and ask you for a light, what are you going to do? Shoot them right away?"

This year's most high-profile case of self-defense gone awry with a rubber-pellet gun involved Moscow student German Galdetsky, who gained fame for leading a crusade against crooked metro police.

On March 25, Galdetsky was on the platform at the Yaroslavsky Station talking to two men when one of them struck him on the head with a bottle. Trying to defend himself, Galdetsky pulled out an OSA and fired it into the air. One of the men grabbed the gun and shot him twice in the head, partially paralyzing him.