Russia in Review

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for October 25 – November 1, 2013

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

Nuclear security agenda:

The U.S. nuclear arsenal needs a multi-billion dollar overhaul in the coming decade to ensure the weapons' safety and effectiveness, Assistant Defense Secretary Madelyn Creedon said on Tuesday, despite warnings from arms control groups that the effort is unaffordable and unnecessary. (Reuters, 10.29.13).

Iran nuclear issues:

"The Iranians displayed unprecedented openness, something that was recognized by all participants" representing the so-called P5+1 powers -- the U.S., Russia, China, U.K., France and Germany, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said in a written reply to questions today. "They offered expanded clarifications in outlining the restrictions of their nuclear program that they are prepared to accept in exchange for an easing of the sanctions regime." (Bloomberg, 10.30.13).

NATO-Russia cooperation, including transit to and from Afghanistan:

NATO said in a video news release featuring Russian partners that after some four years and US $6.6 million of investment, they could now foil bombers by mass screening of crowds. The Stand-off Detection of Explosives program “could help NATO allies and Russia prevent terrorist attacks such as those carried out on the public transport systems in London, Madrid and Moscow” to deadly effect over the last decade. (AFP, 10.30.13).
The delivery of twelve Mil Mi-12V-5 military transport helicopters for the Afghan national army under an additional contract concluded with the U.S. government in 2012 was completed in October, Rosoboronexport said. (Interfax, 11.01.13).
When NATO forces start a major exercise in Latvia and Poland this weekend, they will be rehearsing how to oust an anonymous invading enemy from a fictional region. For some, however, exercise "Steadfast Jazz" will test how the Western alliance could deploy rapid reaction forces to its eastern flank - which borders Russia. (Reuters, 11.01.13).

Missile defense:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has invalidated the order of 2011, which set up an interdepartmental working group at the Russian presidential administration to develop missile defense cooperation with NATO. He also repealed the presidential decree of April 25, 2012, "On the Repeal of the Russian President's Order 'On the Special Representative of the Russian President for Missile Defense Interaction with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'." (Voice of Russia, 10.31.13).
"We're ready for a constructive dialogue with the United States and NATO," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said of the plans for European ballistic-missile defense. "Permanent talks saying ‘nothing should be changed’ and ‘this isn't aimed against Russia’ are unacceptable for us," Lavrov said.(GSN, 10.28.13).
U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller said: “With just 44 ground-based interceptors scheduled to be deployed, both Russia and China’s nuclear arsenals far exceed the number of interceptors we have…. There is therefore no way that U.S. missile defenses could undermine the effectiveness of Russia’s or China’s strategic nuclear forces… We remain convinced that increased predictability on missile defense between the United States and Russia (and between NATO and Russia) is in the national security interests of all countries involved.” (State.gov, 10.31.13).

Nuclear arms control:

The U.S. State Department is refuting an assertion in a Washington Free Beacon report on Thursday that Russia may be in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with its recent tests of several new ballistic missiles. (GSN, 10.25.13).

Counter-terrorism cooperation:

No significant developments.

Cyber security:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes most of the key world political leaders were aware of being tapped by U.S. special services. (Interfax, 10.30.13).
The United States faces a tough task undoing the damage inflicted by allegations it has spied on leaders of allied countries, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. (Reuters, 11.01.13).
Russia has denied reports that its intelligence services spied on hundreds of foreign delegates at a Group of 20 summit in St Petersburg in September using gifts such as teddy bears, diaries and free USB keys. The Russian president's spokesman Dmitriy Peskov said Western media is creating a distraction from the bigger issue of deteriorating relations between the United States and its European allies over the NSA phone tapping scandal. (Reuters, 10.30.13, RBTH, 11.01.13).
The Russian president's spokesman Dmitriy Peskov thinks that the existing government telecommunications in the country ensure the protection of the security of conversations between the first persons of the country. (RIA Novosti, 1030.13).
Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer for former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, says his client has found a technical support job at a Russian website. (AP, 10.31.13).
Russian Internet entrepreneur Pavel Durov said he was inspired by the leaks of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden when developing a new messenger for smartphones that he says offers unprecedented levels of privacy. (Wall Street Journal, 10.25.13).
Russian has become the second most popular internet language among users of the World Wide Web, head of the Ministry of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov said. (Voice of Russia, 10.31.13).

Energy exports from CIS:

Gazprom will not lose out on business after Moscow passes legislation stripping it of a monopoly on exports of liquefied natural gas because demand from China will outstrip Russian output of conventional and unconventional fuel for years. (Reuters, 10.31.13).
Ukraine's government has approved a Production Sharing Agreement with the U.S.-based company Chevron to explore and develop shale-gas deposits in the Lviv region. (RFE/RL, 10.30.13).

Bilateral economic ties:

Russian government officials, led by two deputy ministers, met with U.S. business representatives and lobbyists for a two-day conference in Houston to exchange their views on doing business in Russia. Deputy Economic Development Minister Sergei Belyakov gave a keynote speech during the Oct. 29 to 30 meeting organized by the U.S.-Russia Business Council. Deputy Health Care Minister Sergei Krayevoi discussed ways to improve Russia's competitiveness through health care policies. (The Moscow Times, 11.01.13).
Two U.S. companies may resume supplying Russia with turkey meat if U.S. veterinary services provide additional information required by Russian specialists to show that the companies are able to meet all Russian and Customs Union supply safety requirements, Rosselkhoznadzor, the agriculture watchdog, said. (Interfax, 11.01.13).

Other bilateral issues:

Russian President Vladimir Putin met former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Moscow and said Kissinger’s views on global problems were always of particular interest to Russian politicians and diplomats. Kissinger also met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov. (Voice of Russia, 10.30.13, Interfax, 10.26.13).
A U.S. government programs for the study of Russia and the former Soviet bloc whose recent defunding has sparked outrage in academic circles counts among its alumni the current U.S. ambassador to Russia as well two former secretaries of state. (RIA Novosti, 10.28.13).
The Curiosity rover on Mars carries a Russian-made instrument known as DAN, which stands for Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons. DAN assesses concentrations of hydrogen in Martian soil by irradiating rock with powerful neutron pulses and measuring the return signals. (Gazeta.ru, 10.31.13).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

Russian President Vladimir Putin was named the most powerful person on the planet by Forbes magazine Wednesday, knocking U.S. President Barack Obama off the number one spot. Forbes said that Putin, who ranked third last year, showed his dominance in diplomatic maneuvering during the international crisis over Syria, and the fate of fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden who was given asylum in Russia. (RIA Novosti, 10.30.13).
Russia jumped into the top one hundred of The World Bank’s latest annual report into the ease of doing business in countries around the world–its highest ranking since 2008.The 2014 Doing Business study showed Russia moved up 19 places to stand 92nd compared with its 111th position this year, pushing it towards President Vladimir Putin’s ambitious target of climbing to 20th place by 2018. (Wall Street Journal, 10.29.13).
Russia was named seventh best country for expatriates in an annual survey by HSBC Expat Explorer involving more than 7,000 expats worldwide and described as one of the largest of its kind. (RIA Novosti, 10.31.13).
Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev expects to see "statistically significant" improvement in Russia's fourth quarter macroeconomic performance. (Interfax, 10.31.13).
The Russian government sold a 16 percent stake in diamond miner Alrosa for $1.3 billion, which was the bottom of a planned price range Monday, highlighting the lack of progress in a state privatization drive that was supposed to net $13 billion this year. (Reuters, 10.29.13).
Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed Aleksey Kudrin, a former finance minister and deputy prime minister, to the presidium of the presidential economic council. (Interfax, 10.31.13).
Around 5,000 people took the streets of Moscow on Sunday to participate in an opposition rally, demanding the release of activists jailed after the May 2012 Bolotnaya demonstration and other people they described as "political prisoners." (Russia Today, 10.27.13).

Defense:

On Oct.30 Russia conducted a large-scale exercise to check the readiness of its strategic forces. The exercise involved launches of ballistic missiles as well as missile defense and air defense interceptors. All launches were reported to be successful. (Russian Strategic Forces blog, 10.30.13).
Russia and Belarus will hold joint military exercises titled 2015-Union Shield, following the success of the recent Zapad-2013 drills conducted recently by the two nations, Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday. (RIA Novosti, 10.29.13).
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia will hand over to Belarus four S-300 air defense units to help the republic build up its air defense capability. (Itar-Tass, 10.29.13).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

Moscow will reportedly be spending 57.8 billion rubles (U.S. $2 billion) on security for the Sochi Games, more than twice as much as was spent on the previous 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. (Opendemocracy.net, 10.29.13)
Overall, some 25,000 police, 8,000 Interior Troops and 20,000-30,000 regular soldiers will be on call in case of emergencies during the Olympic Games in Sochi. The FSB is also beefing up the Alpha counter-terrorist unit based in nearby Krasnodar, while its Border Troops will step up patrols along the nearby Georgian frontier. The front line of security in the Black Sea, though, will be the navy's four brand-new Grachonok-class Type 21980 anti-saboteur patrol boat. Meanwhile, the skies will be controlled by Su-27 fighters from Krymsk airbase, Pantsir-S and S-400 surface-to-air missiles and up to 12 drones. (Opendemocracy.net, 10.29.13)
Ahead of the Sochi Olympics in February, Russia is taking saliva samples from religiously conservative Muslim women, according to locals in the North Caucasus. They are gathering DNA so authorities can identify their body parts if any of the women become suicide bombers. (Reuters, 10.31.13).
Russian authorities say they have identified two suspects behind a bombing in Makhachkala, the capital of Russia's North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan. Two people were killed and 15 were injured in the attack, which apparently targeted a liquor store. (RFE/RL, 10.31.13).
A police officer and two suspected militants have been killed in an antiterrorist operation in Russia's North Caucasus Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. (RFE/RL, 10.29.13).
More than 1,000 civilians, militants and law-enforcement officials have been killed in bombings and firefights in the North Caucasus since the start of 2012, according to Caucasian Knot, a Moscow-based research group. (Bloomberg, 10.29.13).
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed a number of senior Interior Ministry officials on Wednesday, including the police head of the Moscow district that was at the scene of violent nationalist riots earlier this month. (RIA Novosti, 10.30.13).
Some 200 officials, including eight unidentified senior officials, have been fired for "loss of confidence" over information in their income declarations for 2012, Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov told President Vladimir Putin's anti-corruption council Wednesday. The mount of detected official corruption is going down, from 34,000 cases in the first six months of 2012 to 29,500 in the same period this year, Putin said. Just 8 percent of officials convicted of bribery are sentenced to prison terms, while the majority is ordered to pay fines, Putin said. Some 1,600 Russian officials have property and bank accounts abroad, mainly real estate in CIS countries. (Interfax, 10.30.13, Moscow Times, 10.31.13).
For embezzling budget funds, officials should be imprisoned for a term of up to 15 years and fined 5 million rubles. These amendments were submitted to the State Duma on Monday, the eve of a session of the Presidential Council on Countering Corruption. (Gazeta.ru, 10.29.13).
Fraudulent schemes used during the creation of state-owned innovation hub Skolkovo have created the potential for misspending almost $4 billion in state funds, the Prosecutor General's Office said Wednesday. (Moscow Times, 10.31.13).
The former mayor of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, has been charged with illegal arms trafficking and planning to commit a terrorist act, with prosecutors accusing him of plotting to shoot down a political opponent's plane with a MANPAD. (The Moscow Times, 10.29.13).
Russia is moving the imprisoned crew of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise protest ship from their jail in the Arctic Circle city of Murmansk to Saint Petersburg. (AFP, 11.01.13).
Russia's top investigative body says it has filed new theft and money-laundering charges against opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. (RFE/RL, 10, 29.13).

Foreign affairs and trade:

State nuclear corporation Rosatom was picked on Monday as the preferred candidate to build Jordan's first nuclear power plant, expected to cost $10 billion and supply 12 percent of the kingdom's energy needs by 2020. (RIA Novosti, 10.29.13).
Russia hopes an international peace conference on Syria will be held before the end of this year, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said, despite reported differences with the United States over opposition representation. (Reuters, 11.01.13).
Russia will make a decision on the degree of its financial contribution to the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons in the near future, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. (Interfax, 11.01.13).
Israeli warplanes attacked a shipment of Russian missiles inside a Syrian government stronghold, officials said Thursday, a development that threatened to add another volatile layer to regional tensions from the Syrian civil war. (AP, 10.31.13).
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday blasted critics of a US-Russia initiative for a peace conference on Syria, warning that toppling the Assad regime militarily posed a "huge threat" to the area. Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by telephone about preparation for an international conference to settle the Syrian conflict. (RIA Novosti, 10.28.13, AFP, 10.30.13).
Foreign ministers from Japan and Russia on Friday agreed to hold a vice ministerial-level meeting early next year to work toward the resolution of an island dispute and signing of a peace treaty formally ending their World War Two hostilities. (Reuters, 11.01.13).
Russia has nothing to fear from the fast-growing China, but could benefit from their cooperation, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in a televised interview Saturday. (RIA Novosti, 10.26.13).
Venezuelan and Russian officials have signed several agreements in the sphere of defense and security, Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and Russian Security Council President Nikolai Patrushev said. On Oct. 28, 2013, two Tu-160 strategic bombers flew from the base in Engels to the Maiquetia airport near Caracas, Venezuela (Interfax, 10.30.13, Russian strategic forces blog, 10.28.13).

Russia's neighbors:

Georgia's new president Georgy Margvelashvili said on Monday he would press ahead with efforts to deepen the former Soviet republic's ties with the West despite Russian concerns. Margvelashvili won more than 60 percent of votes in the Sunday elections. Davit Bakradze, the candidate of the United National Movement of outgoing President Mikheil Saakashvili, was second with nearly 22 percent. Former parliamentary speaker and Rose Revolution figure Nino Burdhzanadze had 10 percent. (Reuters, RFE/R, 10.28.13).
Georgian Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze has reiterated that her country may agree to restore diplomatic relations with Russia only if Russia renounces its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states and if it lifts its "occupation" of these territories. (Interfax, 10.29.13).
A Georgian court has acquitted former defense minister Bacho Akhalaia of charges involving the torture and inhuman treatment of seven Special Forces soldiers on Oct. 31. On Oct. 28, the same court sentenced Akhalaia to nearly four years in prison for abuse of office for using excessive force in suppressing a 2006 prison riot in which seven inmates were killed. (RFE/RL, 10.31.13).
Georgia’s outgoing President Mikheil Saakashvili told journalists in Brussels on Tuesday that he believes his arrest is among the preconditions for normalization of relations between Moscow and Tbilisi. (Interfax, 10.29.13).
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said he saw no reason for Moscow to cut gas supplies to Ukraine over an unpaid bill for now, playing down talk of an imminent "gas war" that might disrupt gas flows to Europe Medvedev also advised Ukraine to look to Brussels to raise standby loans in future because Ukraine association agreement with EU spells end to exclusive Russia relations.(Reuters, Interfax, 11.01.13).
Ukraine's energy minister has acknowledged that state oil and gas company Naftohaz has fallen behind in payments for Russian gas, but said he expects the matter to be settled very soon. Aleksei Miller, the head of Russia's Gazprom, said Ukraine owes the state-controlled company $882 million for gas shipped in August. Miller also said that "advance payments will be considered in the future, as stipulated by the contract." (RFE/RL, 10.30.13).
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that Russian trade with Ukraine would not be severed if Ukraine signs an agreement next month with the European Union, but he said the current free trade conditions would not apply if the country moves closer to the West. (The Moscow Times, 10.29.13).
The EU and the IMF are in emergency talks to work out who is going to foot the bill for taking Ukraine under the EU's umbrella instead of allowing it to join the Russian-led Customs Union. The bottom line is that the IMF has no choice but to restart its standby agreement irrespective of if Kyiv keeps its reform promises or not. (Business New Europe, 11.01.13).
European Union mediators resumed a push Tuesday to secure the release of jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, with EU politicians warning that time was running out before the signing of a landmark trade agreement next month. (Reuters, 10.29.13).
A draft of the Vilnius summit declaration acknowledges the European "aspirations" of its six Eastern Partnership countries, includes wording on Belarusian civil society that Minsk wants to delete, and has left a blank space regarding EU-Armenia relations. (RFE/RL, 10.31.13).
Host President Alyaksandr Lukashenka ended the summit on Oct. 25 by saying CIS leaders "would like for Georgia to return to the Commonwealth." (RFE/RL, 10.25.13).
Belarusian secret police tried to arrest a Russian citizen in downtown Moscow. Igor Yevstratov was apprehended by four men as he was boarding a train to St. Petersburg. Yevstratov was a senior executive at Belaruskali before Uralkali terminated a sales cartel with the Belarusian fertilizer maker in July. (RIA Novosti, 10.28.13).

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