Russia in Review

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda.

Nuclear security agenda:

• ISIS has used the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq to suggest the group is expanding so rapidly it could buy its first nuclear weapon within a year. (Independent, 05.23.15).
• The latest issue of NATO Review says that “there is a very real - but not yet fully identified risk - of foreign fighters in ISIL’s ranks using chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials as “weapons of terror” against the West.”  (NATO Review, 06.05.15).
• A disgruntled contract employee who had been working at Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear power plant in the United States harassed and threatened union officials before police discovered he had a carload of explosive materials and ammunition, prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint. (AP, 05.28.15).
• U.S. President Barack Obama has drawn a line under the completed Megatons to Megawatts program by terminating a state of national emergency.  In a letter to the US Congress, Obama said that with the completion of the U.S.-Russian program, the order was no longer needed. A state of national emergency was declared by the USA in 2000 to help to ensure that payments to Russia under the 1993 agreement to downblend surplus military high-enriched uranium could not be derailed by unrelated legal actions.  (World Nuclear News, 05.28.15).
• One of the Kurchatov Institute's HEU research reactors, Gamma, is being decommissioned. The fuel has been removed from the reactor and all the equipment is being prepared for utilization. (IPFM, 05.26.15).
• On April 27, 2015 the government of Kazakhstan approved an agreement with IAEA that would create a reserve of low-enriched uranium in the country. According to the agreement, the reserve will consist of no more than 60 cylinders of the 30B type containing UF6 with uranium enriched to no more than 4.95%. (IPFM Blog, 05.27.15).
• NNSA’s Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence program has held a hands-on nuclear forensics course at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.  Participating countries included Belarus, Chile, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Morocco, Moldova, and Slovakia.  (NNSA, 05.22.15).
• National Nuclear Security Administration has joined the Republic of Armenia to announce the safe and secure removal of three unused radioactive sources from two locations in Yerevan, Armenia. (NNSA, 05.27.15).

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• Moscow and Washington are close to agreement on a formula that bridges differences over U.S. demands to quickly re-impose U.N. sanctions on Iran if Tehran violates its commitments under a nuclear deal, officials said Tuesday. France's ambassador to Washington Gerard Araud said no structure was yet in place for snapping back sanctions but the basic premise would entail a majority vote of the five permanent Security Council members — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France. (AP, 05.26.15).
• Deputy Head of Russia's Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation Nicolai Spassky voiced his company's willingness to begin building two new nuclear power plants in Southern Iran. "Rosatom is interested in beginning work for building Bushehr II and III nuclear power plants in Southern Iran," Spassky said in a meeting with Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Mehdi Sanayee in the Russian capital on Wednesday.  (FNA, 05.27.15).
• The contract for supplying air defense systems S-300 to Tehran will be effected when the issue of Iran’s lawsuit has been settled, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said. "Our colleagues, professionals in this field, are currently finalizing the contract," he said. Moscow would not supply S-300 missiles to Iran from its stocks but build new ones instead. “That means a delay to be measured not in months but possibly in years,” said a person close to the defense ministry. (Sputnik, Financial Times, 05.26.15, Tass, 05.27.15).
• Six Iranian food producers have been given permission to import their products into Russia. (Moscow Times, 05.26.15).

NATO-Russia relations:

• “We learned during the Cold War that when it comes to nuclear weapons, caution, predictability and transparency are vital," said NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg. “Russia's nuclear saber-rattling is unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous,” he said. Stoltenberg said putting nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad or Crimea “would fundamentally change the balance of security in Europe." (Wall Street Journal, 05.27.15).
• About 100 fighter jets and 4,000 personnel from the United States and eight European nations began an Arctic training exercise in the Nordic nations on May 25. (RFE/RL, 05.25.15).

Missile defense:

• Russia will have to retaliate against the unrestricted development of NATO missile defense networks capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has said. He was commenting on the engagement of Norway in the missile defense project.  (Interfax, 05.29.15).

Arms control:

• An attempt to strengthen and expand the world's premier arms-control treaty ended in failure Friday as international delegations squabbled over a long-sought goal of establishing a ban on weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The United States and several of its allies rejected the conference's final document, which was supposed to further the implementation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. (Washington Post, 05.29.15).
• The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says 90 percent of the world’s chemical armaments stockpile has been destroyed.  (RFE/RL, 05.28.15).

Counter-terrorism agenda:

• More than half the countries in the world are currently generating Islamist extremist fighters for groups such as al-Qaida and Islamic State, the UN has said.

A report by the UN security council says there are more than 25,000 “foreign terrorist fighters” currently involved in jihadi conflicts and they are “travelling from more than 100 member states”. (Guardian, 05.26.15).

• A top Tajik police commander who has been missing for weeks has reappeared on the Internet, claiming in a video that he has joined the Islamic State militant group. In the video Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov, the commander of the Tajik Interior Ministry's Special Forces, reeled off threats directed at Tajikistan, Russia and the United States. Khalimov claims that he has traveled to the United States three times and received training there from Blackwater while still serving as an officer of the Tajik Interior Ministry.  (New York Times, 05.30.15, RFE/RL, 05.28.15).

Cyber security:

• U.S. investigators believe the identity thieves who stole personal information of more than 100,000 taxpayers from an Internal Revenue Service website are part of a criminal operation based in Russia. (RFE/RL, 05.28.15).

Energy exports from CIS:

• Norway has overtaken Russia as Western Europe's top gas supplier, data from state firms shows. Norway exported 29.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) to western Europe in the first quarter of this year while Russia sold 20.29 bcm. (Reuters, 05.22.15).

Bilateral economic ties:

• The Urals Civil Aviation Plant has signed a contract with the U.S. company Bell Helicopter on assembling helicopters in Russia. (Kommersant, 05.25.15).
• Visa and MasterCard now process all Russian transactions through a state-run system designed to prevent the U.S. credit card companies from suspending service, a Central Bank official said Thursday.  (Moscow Times, 05.28.15).
• Russian agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor has banned the importation of live birds and incubated eggs from the U.S. over concerns about avian flu effective from May 26. (Interfax, 05.26.15).

Other bilateral issues:

• U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden said that it was "overwhelmingly in our interest to continue to cooperate" with the Kremlin on issues like counterterrorism and a deal to restrict Iran's nuclear capabilities. "We're not looking to embarrass him. We're not looking for regime change. We're not looking for any fundamental alteration of the circumstances inside Russia. We're looking for him to, in our view, act rationally,” he said. (RFE/RL, 05.27.15).
• U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden said that in Ukraine Russian Vladimir Putin “will push as far as he can, in my view, until he reaches a resistance that in fact says there's a big price to pay. And he may then make a mistake and continue." "The United States sanctions on Russia must and will remain in place until the Minsk agreements are fully implemented," he said. (RFE/RL, 05.27.15).
• Invoking the fates of Edward J. Snowden and the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday denounced the arrests of top FIFA officials in Zurich as “another blatant attempt by the United States to extend its jurisdiction to other states. FIFA may have avoided its current problems if Russia and Qatar had not been chosen as hosts of the next two World Cups, President Sepp Blatter said Friday. (Reuters, 05.29.15, New York Times, 05.29.15).
• The United States on Friday authorized exports of certain communications services and software to Crimean residents, who were earlier denied access to such exports due to U.S. sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. (Unian, 05.25.15).
• Russia is warning citizens traveling abroad that U.S. authorities are on the hunt for Russians around the world who may have violated U.S. laws (RFE/RL, 05.23.15).
• The United States says it is "concerned" by a new Russian law banning what it calls "undesirable" NGOs (RFE/RL, 05.25.15).
• When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with President Vladimir V. Putin in Sochi, Russia, this month, Mr. Kerry showed him photographs of Russian air defenses and other weapons in eastern Ukraine. (New York Times, 05.28.15).
• A court in the Petrodvortsovy District of Russia's northern capital has imposed a fine on a civilian staff member of the United States Department of Defense, who was charged with violating Russian immigration regulations. " (Interfax, 05.28.15).
• The U.S. military’s eyes in the skies over the turbulent Middle East will go partially dark in 2017 and it faces the prospect of a critical gap in weather data. Both China and Russia will generate comparable data, but Congress has made clear that the U.S. cannot — as a matter of security — receive data from these nations. (Washington Post, 05.27.15).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

• President Vladimir Putin said on May 26 that Russia should not deprive itself of foreign investment and technologies. Putin told a conference of business people, "We should not, on any account, cut ourselves off" from the kind of foreign investment and technology that can drive economic growth. (RFE/RL, 05.26.15).
• With Russia's economy contracting and price inflation running at more than 16 percent, Rosstat said Russians' real wages fell by 13.2 percent in April compared to the same month in 2014 — far exceeding the 8.3 percent decline in the first quarter of this year. This was the biggest monthly drop since 1999. Average real incomes were 4 percent lower in April than a year earlier, according to Rosstat. With earnings sliding, Russian retail sales fell by 9.8 percent year-on-year in April after falling 6.7 percent in the first quarter. (Moscow Times, 05.24.15).
• Year-on-year price inflation in Russia slipped below 16 percent for the first time since February. Prices rose 0.1 percent in the week ending Monday, a report by state statistics service Rosstat said Wednesday. This brought year-on-year inflation to 15.8-15.9 percent for the week, down from 16.1 percent the previous week, the Interfax news agency calculated.(Moscow Times, 05.27.15).
• Capital flight from Russia is forecast to hit $110 billion this year, the Economic Development Ministry said Thursday. (Moscow Times, 05.28.15).
• Rosatom’s sales totaled $16 billion in 2014, including $5 billion in foreign sales. (Nuclear.ru, 05.22.15).
• President Vladimir Putin continues to enjoy the approval of a staggering 86 percent of the Russian public, independent Moscow-based pollster the Levada Center said. By comparison, the most recent Gallup Poll data shows that U.S. President Barack Obama enjoys the approval of a mere 46 percent of Americans.(Moscow Times, 05.26.15).
• Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov does not want to sign the draft legislative amendments necessary for rescheduling elections to the State Duma so that they take place in December  2016. A source in the leadership of Russia’s liberal democratic party said that the draft amendment bill with the signatures of the leaders of all factions is ready, but lacks the signature of the Communist party leader. (Kommersant, 05.28.15).
• In elections to the local council in Kaliningrad Oblast's Baltisky district, the ruling United Russia party failed to secure even a single seat. Turnout was 47.7 percent, unusually high for a local council election. (RFE/RL, 05.27.15).
• Russian rights groups named as potential targets of a new law allowing the government to brand international organizations "undesirable" and shutter their Russia operations have criticized the legislation.  Vitaly Zolochevsky, a parliamentarian from the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has reportedly asked the Prosecutor General's Office to check if watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch pose a threat to Russia's security.(RFE/RL, 05.25.15, 05.26.15).
• Founder of Russia's non-profit Dynasty Foundation Dmitry Zimin has announced plans to stop providing money to the organization after it was assigned 'foreign agent' status by the Russian authorities. (Interfax, 05.26.15).
• The wife of Russian political opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza who has been hospitalized in Moscow with a mysterious illness urged on Thursday that he be evacuated to a hospital in Europe or Israel. Doctors said he may have taken too many antidepressants in the wake of Boris Nemtsov’s death. (New York Times, Washington Times, 05.29.15).
• The first quarter of 2015 saw the mortality rate in Russia grow by a surprising 5.2 percent, with analysts particularly puzzled by a 22-percent rise in the death rate among those suffering from respiratory illnesses. Experts are so far reluctant to attribute these figures to a single specific cause. (Interfax, 05.26.15).
• Though emigration from Russia trended downward from 1997 to 2011, there was a sudden spike in Russians leaving the country around Vladimir Putin's third term, which began in 2012. In 2012, almost 123,000 people left, and in 2013 that number rose further to more than 186,000. More than 203,000 Russians left in the second half of 2014. (Business Insider, 05.20.15).

Defense and Aerospace:

• Russia will purchase at least 50 of the newly revived Tupolev Tu-160 (Blackjack) heavy strategic bombers. This will dramatically increase Russia’s bomber capabilities as only fifteen Tu-160s currently remain in service.  (National Interest, 05.28.15).
• The T-50 fifth-generation fighter jet is expected to join the Russian Air Force in 2016. (Interfax, 05.28.15).
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to make losses of Russian troops in peacetime a secret. The decree published on the official government web-site and signed by Putin on Wednesday makes it a state secret to divulge information about peacetime losses of Russian troops in "special operations." (AP, 05.28.15).
• Russia's Defense Ministry says it has kicked off air-force exercises in the Ural Mountains and Western Siberia involving 12,000 soldiers and 250 aircraft. The maneuvers are meant to help the military prepare for a larger drill in September, called Tsentr-2015.(RFE/RL, 05.26.15).
• Russian auditors have uncovered 92 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in financial violations committed by federal space agency Roscosmos last year, the head of Russia's Audit Chamber Tatyana Golikova said.(Moscow Times, 05.24.15).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• Magomed Suleymanov, aka Abu Usman Gimrinsky, has been chosen as the new leader of the Caucasus Emirate. Suleymanov replaces Aliaskhab Kebekov (Ali Abu-Mukhammad), Umarov’s successor as North Caucasus insurgency head, who was killed in a counterterrorism operation in April. Suleymanov is currently qadi (supreme religious authority) of the so-called Vilayet Dagestan.   (RFE/RL, 05.29.15).
• Investigators probing the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov issued a warrant to question Ruslan Geremeyev, top security official in Chechnya, the first public sign that the high-profile killing could be linked to the Kremlin-backed strongman leader of the troubled North Caucasus region. (Wall Street Journal, 05.23.15).

Foreign affairs and trade:

• The export of Russian military-purpose products exceeded 415.5 billion rubles ($15.5 billion) in 2014 and it has been at stable at this level for the past three years," Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Commission for military-cooperation between Russia and foreign states on May 25. (Interfax, 05.25.15).
• Russia says it is terminating a 1.4 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) deal for two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships from France. Tass quoted Oleg Bochkaryov, the deputy head of the Military-Industrial Commission, as saying on May 26, "Russia won't take them, that's an accomplished fact."  Following a meeting with Russian State Duma Chairman Sergei Naryshkin France's right-wing party leader Marine Le Pen blamed the United States on May 26 for influencing France to impose sanctions on Russia, in a move which led to Russia's cancellation of the coveted Mistral contract.  (RFE/RL, 05.26.15, 05.27.15).
• Russia and Egypt have agreed on a contract to supply 46 Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter aircraft, the Vedomosti newspaper reported, citing sources in the Russian aviation industry. (Interfax, 05.25.15).
• The Eurasian Economic Union and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam signed a free trade agreement. The signing ceremony was held as part of the session of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council in Kazakhstan. (Belta, 05.29.15).
• Venezuela and Russia's top oil producer, Rosneft, have agreed on around $14 billion in investment in the South American OPEC country's oil and gas sector. (RFE/RL, 05.28.15).
• Russia's total foreign trade turnover dropped 41.8 percent during the first four months of 2015 to $54.1 billion, RBC reported, citing data from Russia's Federal Customs Service. Russian exports dropped 35.2 percent to $110.4 billion against $170.4 billion last year as low oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis tightened access to financing. (Moscow Times, 05.27.15).
• Russian grain exports dropped 25 percent between February and May 20 compared to the same period last year, the Agriculture Ministry said Monday, as a wheat export tax took its toll on the market. (Moscow Times, 05.25.15).
• Russia says the two-day EU Eastern Partnership summit in Riga has lost "another opportunity to make a step toward bridging a widening gap on the continent." (RFE/RL, 05.23.15).
• Germany has protested Russia's decision to turn away an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Conservative lawmaker Karl-Georg Wellmann was denied entry into Russia when he arrived at a Moscow airport on May 24, and returned to Germany on May 25. Germany also  criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for signing a law allowing security officials to ban foreign and international nongovernmental organizations if they are deemed undesirable. (RFE/RL, 05.25.15,Reuters, 05.27.15).
• Russian President Vladimir Putin had a phone conversation with British Prime Minister David Cameron on May 25. Putin and Cameron discussed the situation in the Middle East with an emphasis on the Syria issue and the fight against the terrorist group Islamic State. (Interfax, 05.26.15).

Russia's neighbors:

• One Ukrainian serviceman has been killed and six other have been wounded in attacks in eastern Ukraine, a Kyiv military spokesman said on May 29. On May 26^th Kiev said that four pro-Russian rebels, a Ukrainian soldier, and one civilian were killed in clashes in the previous 24 hours. On May 23^rd a Ukrainian military spokesman said one Ukrainian serviceman has been killed and five wounded. Also Alexei Mozgovoi, a 40-year-old businessman-turned-separatist-commander, was killed in an ambush on a highway in eastern Ukraine. (IBS, 05.26.15, RFE/RL, 05.23.15, Reuters, 05.29.15, RFE/RL, 05.26.15).
• Leader of the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine Aleksandr Zakharchenko said on May 29 in the rebel-controlled Ukrainian city of Donetsk that separatist forces will regain control over Slovyansk, Kostyantynivka, and Krasnoarmiyisk, which were briefly held by the rebels last year. (RFE/RL, 05.29.15).
• An investigation using publicly available videos, smartphone photographs and satellite images shows that Russia is continuing to defy the West by conducting protracted military operations inside Ukraine. One Western official said Russia had moved about nine battalion tactical groups close to its border with Ukraine and a Reuters reporter saw Russia's army massing troops and hundreds of pieces of weaponry including mobile rocket launchers, tanks and artillery at a makeshift base near the border with Ukraine. Russia has long dismissed Western allegations that its military has intervened in Ukraine as little more than computer-generated propaganda.  (New York Times, 05.28.15, Reuters, 05.28.15).
• Russia's consul in Kyiv has visited two suspected Russian soldiers who were captured in eastern Ukraine. Russian Embassy spokesman Oleg Grishin said on May 27 that Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Aleksandr Aleksandrov "feel well."  (RFE/RL, 05.26.15).
• Ukraine has already spent $7.7 million on implementing its European Wall project which aims to reinforce the Ukrainian-Russian border with a wall. And Russia has dug about 100 kilometers of trenches in the Rostov region, which borders both of Ukraine’s self-declared republics, Donetsk and Luhansk, (Wall Street Journal, 05.27.15, Bloomberg, 05.26.15, Interfax, 05.22.15).
• Russian trade turnover with Ukraine fell by around 60 percent in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year, according to a recent study by researchers at the World Trade Center Moscow. Russian exports to Ukraine fell 63.5 percent, from $8.1 billion to $2.9 billion, while imports of Ukrainian goods fell 60 percent from $4 billion to 1.6 billion between January and April of this year. (Moscow Times, 05.27.15).
• Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev says Russia would adopt what he calls a tough position if Ukraine decides not to repay debts owed by its previous government. (RFE/RL, 05.23.15).
• U.S. President Barack Obama and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met at the White House on Tuesday to discuss Russia's “increasingly aggressive posture" in Eastern Europe. (Wall Street Journal, 05.26.156).
• The United States will potentially provide Ukraine with an additional $1 billion loan guarantee at the end of 2015 if Kiev continues implementing reform measures, US Vice President Joe Biden said. (Sputnik, 05.27.15).
• NATO's political affairs and security chief Thrasyvoulos Terry Stamatopoulos warned May 27 that "continual attacks" against Ukraine were impeding Kyiv's efforts to modernize its army enough to one day join the Western military alliance.  (RFE/RL, 05.27.16).
• "Ukraine has no alternative to European and Euro-Atlantic integration. This is reflected in a new edition of the National Security and Defense Strategy, which was recently endorsed by the National Security and Defense Council and signed by the president," Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov said. (Interfax, 05.27.15).
• Lawmakers in Turkmenistan are considering constitutional changes that would remove the 70-year age limit at which a president can serve. (RFE/RL, 05.29.15).

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