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Spring 2005
Our Archangel Committee hosted the Archangel Rock Bank "Blind Vandal" here in the United States March 22 - 28, 2005. Committee member Mike Ouellet planned and organized the visit and accompanied the band throughout the week. We send Mike our hearty thanks! The band (including three musicians, a sound engineer and manager Alexander Mezentsev) performed three concerts: at the Alehouse in Portland, the Atlantic Hall in Kennebunk, and at the Harper's Ferry Club in Allston, Massachusetts. All audiences were enthusiastic and appreciative of the band's style of music. The bank received extensive media coverage, including a large story in the Portland Press Herald on March 24th (with color photograph) and guest performances on Portland radio stations WBLM and WMPG. Other activities included visits with committee member Charlotte Rosenthal's Russian language class at USM, a potluck dinner with committee members, and lots of sightseeing in Maine and around Boston. The band donated 20 birds of happiness to our committee for our fund-raising efforts and we donated a book and CD about famed Russian poet Alexander Pushkin to the Archangel Literary Museum. Finally, the band conveyed official greetings between the Mayor's of Portland and Archangel. We currently have about a dozen Blind Vandal CD's and we are exploring selling them on our website. We thank Sergey Kremensky and the Onego Shipping Company of Rotterdam for sponsoring this trip and we look forward to a return visit! For more information and photographs, please go to www.blindvandal.ru
We mourn the recent passing of former Westbrook Mayor Philip Spiller. His obituary in the March 7, 2005 Portland Press Herald said it all: One of his most inspiring times as Mayor was leading the delegation to Russia in 1988 to establish Archangel as the Sister City of Greater Portland. Meeting with Archangel Mayor Stanislav Potemkin and his City Council, Phil signed treaty documents in both Russian and English, opening Archangel to Mainers, as no Americans had been there since 1945.
A chartered AN-24 turboprop aircraft crashed on approach to the port city of Varandei in Archangel's Nenets Autonomous Region in March, 2005. More than half of the Lukoil workers on board were killed but quick rescue operations in the high Arctic saved many lives. Russian's Lukoil oil company is currently upgrading the Varandei port on the Arctic Pechora Sea. Lukoil and U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips have established a joint venture, Rusco, to develop the oil-rich fields in the Timan-Pechora region with the intention of ultimately shipping crude to the United States from Varandei.
On December 24, 2004 Russia successfully test-fired a long-range Topol-M ICBM from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Archangel Region; the missile hit the intended target many thousands of miles away on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Reportedly, the Topol-M has improved capabilities to avoid detection and interception. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has just placed the first few ABM interceptor missiles in underground silo's at Fort Greely, Alaska and hopes to have the long-range defensive radar operational on Adak Island in the Aluetians by the end of 2005. FMI: www.defenselink.mil/news
May 15 to 22 - Maine District Court Judge David Kennedy will lead a 5 person legal delegation o Pskov (near Saint Petersburg) for a large conference focusing on domestic violence. May 20 to 27 - The Maine Department of Transportation will host Archangel Deputy Governor Yuri Shevelev and Archangel Transportation Commissioner Alexi Vereshchagin August 1 to 18 - Waterville people-to-people delegation to Kotlas. August 8 and September 5 - Celebrations in Portsmouth, NH to commemorate the signing of the Russo- Japanese Treaty of 1905 August 11 and 12 - Conference of northeast U.S. Russian Sister City Programs in Saratoga Springs, NY. September 17 to 24 - Maine will host a nine member legal delegation from Archangel
Four American convoy veterans have joined 200 British convoy veterans on probably their final trip to Russia to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of Russian Victory Day over Hitler's Fascism. The group is visiting Saint Petersburg, Murmansk and Archangel for nearly 3 weeks, culminating in the solemn observance of Victory Day on May 9, 2005. Donald Wampler of Oak Harbor, Washington is one of the American veterans and he is carrying a commemorative letter from our Committee to the people of Archangel. In 1942, Donald was an 18 year old seaman on the U.S. merchant ship SS West Nilus as part of northbound convoy PQ 16. Under vicious daylight attacks, the convoy lost many ships but Donald and his ship successfully reached Archangel in June 1942 to deliver urgently needed ammunition, tanks, airplanes and trucks. The ships stayed tied up in the Solumbula District of Archangel until October 1942 when lengthening periods of night-time darkness finally made it safer to transit south to England. |
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