‘I do think all the critique targeted against the project on the industrial development of the northern parts of the Urals is well grounded. This project is only a simulation of activity on the part of both the regional and district authorities,’ Unicom Partner’s Asset Management Director Vitaliy Kalugin said to UrBC.

‘As far as the civil servants are concerned, they only see the development of the project as a good way of getting a lot of money from the Federal Investment Fund. The implementation strategy they said they were going to use as well as the obvious dependence on the undiscovered potential resources make the very existence of the project unthinkable,’ he added.

‘As soon as the next president comes into office, the project (known as The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals) will cease to exist. Yet there has already been created a certain infrastructure consisting of many high-ranking officials who will find it hard to admit that they simply wasted their time,’ Mr. Kalugin noted.

Kommersant Ural’s press center hosted a debate devoted to the possible doubts raised by the future of the project on August 29, 2007. Some representatives of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a number of other experts spoke very bitterly about both the project coordinators and the project itself. The management of The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals Corporation preferred not to join in the debate.