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{{Animosity between Russia and the West over Ukraine’s disintegration has forced Russia to change its course toward the East, Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin said in an interview with Russian media on Friday.}}

Yakunin, 65, who manages one of Russia’s biggest companies — Russian Railways employs more than 880,000 people — had sanctions imposed on him by the United States and the European Union in March as member of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

Yakunin has his own interpretation of the sanctions, saying in softly accented English: “It was clearly stated that I was sanctioned not because of my wrongdoings but because of my connections with some persons on the top of Russian hierarchy,”

“I consider the sanctions list to be a list of people who actually do something positive for our society and our country. It was not us who introduced this clash, but we were sanctioned and disgraced in the mass media, he said.

Yakunin, who has been accused of massive corruption by opposition politician Alexei Navalny, singled out Putin as “a leader who was disgraced in a way that is absolutely not acceptable in normal diplomatic relations even in the modern tense period of life.”

He said Western pressure was “not civilized behavior” and that this demonstrated lack of democracy in the West.

The Moscow Times spoke to Yakunin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a huge annual get-together that attracts thousands of high-profile business leaders and official from Russia and abroad. This year, the international contingent is slightly thinner than usual, as executives, particularly from the U.S., have bowed to political pressure to keep away.

“Lots of people who came to this forum explain in private that in their countries American ambassadors were reaching them with letters and telephone calls urging them not to come to this event or they will have to face consequences,” Yakunin said.

In this situation nothing remains to Russia but to turn to the east, he said.

“We can aim at reaching new level of relations with our friends in China, South Korea, Japan, the Pacific countries, Latin America and so on,” he said.

But while confident of the bounties that await Russia from ramping up cooperation with new partners, Yakunin is sure that the West will turn back to Russia as soon as the media pressure subsides.

“Business people are very pragmatic. Russia is a very important market, which has nothing to do with emotions, he said.

{Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin}

TheMoscowtimes

{{The mayor of a village in north-western France has been castrated and killed by a jealous husband, reports say.}}

Dominique Leboucher, 55, was murdered on Thursday night by a man who accused him of having an affair with his wife, police sources told media.

The unnamed attacker then reportedly killed himself.

Mr Leboucher, a former insurance salesman, was only elected mayor of Bretteville-le-Rabet in Normandy in March, local media say.

He became a councillor in 2001 before taking up the post of deputy mayor in 2008, according to French newspaper Ouest-France.

Bretteville-le-Rabet is a small village in Normandy with fewer that 250 residents.

Yannick Guesnon, one of the Mr Leboucher’s deputies, told media he did not believe the theory about the married mayor’s infidelity, adding that the attack appeared to be “an act of madness”.

A police investigation is under way.

{{Liu Han, a Chinese tycoon believed to have links to China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang, has been sentenced to death.}}

A Hubei court has found Liu Han and his brother Liu Wei guilty of “organising and leading mafia-style crime and murder”, reports Xinhua.

The two men were among a group of 36 people charged with similar crimes.

Liu Han’s sentencing is believed to be part of a wider corruption crackdown linked to Zhou’s network.

The court verdict stated that, among other things, Liu Han and his group had “in an organised fashion obtained financial gains via illegal activities”.

They had also on multiple occasions “committed murder, harm and illegal detention”.

The verdict stated they relied on “the cover-ups and collusion of government employees” to illegally control gaming machines in Guanghan in Sichuan province.

Liu, who is the former head of mining conglomerate Sichuan Hanlong Group, was ranked 148th on Forbes’ list of the richest Chinese business people in 2012.

His former company once tried to take over Australian miner Sundance Resources Ltd.

Chinese state media said previously that the Sichuan-based gang had had strong political ties that played a role in Liu Han’s appointment as a delegate in Sichuan’s political advisory body.