Russia in Review

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for August 2-9, 2013

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

Nuclear security agenda:

No significant developments.

Iran nuclear issues:

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said a new round of talks between Iran and world powers over its nuclear program could no longer be delayed and should take place by mid-September. (Reuters, 08.06.13).
Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet for the first time with newly inaugurated Iranian President Hassan Rohani in the Kyrgyz capital on September 13. (RFE/RL, 08.09.13).

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

The head of Russia's state-owned arms-exporting company has rejected accusations that Moscow inflated its prices for helicopters the United States is providing to Afghanistan. (RFE/RL, 08.09.13).

Missile defense:

"I cannot say that we are at the threshold of a breakthrough or an abrupt change towards the settlement of outstanding difficult issues both in the sphere of ABM and other arms control-related aspects. I do not have grounds for this," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said. (Interfax, 08.07.13).

Nuclear arms control:

Further steps towards nuclear arms reduction are impossible unless Russia and the USA come to an agreement on ABM, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said after meeting with Rose Gottemoeller, the U.S. under secretary of state for arms control. (Interfax, 08.07.13).

Counter-terrorism cooperation:

Two college students from Kazakhstan have been indicted on obstruction of justice charges for allegedly trying to hide evidence related to the Boston Marathon bombing. (RFE/RL, 08.08.13).
The father of an unarmed Orlando Muslim shot to death in May by an FBI agent during questioning related to the Boston Marathon bombings has arrived in Florida from Russia for meetings with lawyers trying to pry details of the killing from U.S. and local officials. (Reuters, 08.08.13).

Cyber security:

Russia's upper house of parliament is planning to ask former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to advise the country on improving Internet privacy and security. (CSM, 08.06.13).

Energy exports from CIS:

No significant developments.

Bilateral economic ties:

U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill is spending at least $200 million to build a sunflower oil factory in the Volgograd region in southern Russia, the local government said Tuesday. (RIA Novosti, 08.06.13).

Other bilateral issues:

President Obama on Wednesday canceled next month’s Moscow summit meeting. Mr. Obama will still attend the annual conference of the Group of 20 nations in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5 and 6, but will not even meet with Mr. Putin on the sidelines. The immediate cause was Russia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to Edward J. Snowden. But two sides have been at loggerheads over arms control, missile defense, Syria, trade and human rights, and Obama aides said Moscow was no longer even responding to their proposals. The lack of prospect for agreement in Moscow in September was reinforced Monday when Rose Gottemoeller, the under secretary of state for arms control, met with Sergei Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, in Brussels. Aides said Mr. Obama decided that same day to cancel the summit meeting. And the president has privately expressed exasperation at the way Mr. Putin has dealt with him. (New York Times, 08.07.13).
U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to cancel a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is disappointing, but he is still welcome in Russia, a top Kremlin foreign policy aide said on Wednesday. “This very problem underlines the fact that the United States is still not ready to build relations on an equal basis,” he said. Aleksei K. Pushkov, chairman of the Russian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said the move heralded the end of the Obama administration’s “reset” policy. (New York Times, Reuters, 08.08.13).
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin were to either sign or to oversee signing of five documents during their summit in Moscow and meeting on sidelines of the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg next month, Kommersant reported on Thursday. Among them was a comprehensive statement on development of bilateral cooperation that would touch upon a wide range of issues. The other documents included statements and agreements on the following subjects: on trade and investments, on countering drug trafficking, on cooperation in nuclear and energy spheres. (Belfer Center, 08.09.13).
President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram Thursday to former U.S. President George W. Bush, wishing him a quick recovery from heart surgery. The warm words to the man who once said he looked Putin in the eye and got a "sense of his soul" highlighted how different the relationship is between the leaders in the Kremlin and the White House now. (Reuters, 08.08.13).
U.S. officials expect no breakthroughs when Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel meet their Russian counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Shoigu on Friday, but they say the very decision to go ahead with the talks despite the current frictions is significant in itself. Missile defense, nuclear disarmament and military-technical cooperation will be the focus of Friday’s talks. (Reuters, 08.08.13, Itar-Tass, 08.09.13).
President Obama told The Tonight Show's Jay Leno that he was frustrated by Russia's decision to grant Edward Snowden asylum but said the two countries must work together."There are times when they slip back into Cold War thinking and Cold War mentality," Obama said on air Tuesday evening. "What I continually say to them and to President Putin, that's the past." (Washington Post, 08.07.13).
Fugitive former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden's father plans to fly to Russia from the U.S. to meet with his son next week, a representative of the father's lawyer said Friday. (Wall Street Journal. 08.09.13).
U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden can move freely throughout Russia and work in any position other than government service, a high-ranking migration official said Friday.(Moscow Times, 08.09.13).
GOP Senate Armed Services Committee members John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called on President Barack Obama to follow up on cancellation of the summit with Putin by moving forward with “completion of all phases of our missile defense programs in Europe” and to set in motion a new expansion of NATO. (Defense News, 08.08.13).
Commenting on Russia’s new anti-gay law, President Barack Obama said that he had “no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.” A Russian official has promised that the law will be enforced during next February’s Sochi Games despite the International Olympic Committee’s contrary stance. "As to the criticism of our law banning homosexual propaganda we have to reiterate that this criticism is absolutely invalid and groundless," said the Foreign Ministry's rights envoy, Konstantin Dolgov. (Washington Post, RIA Novosti, 08.07.13).
More than 80 members of Congress have called on US Secretary of State John Kerry to take steps to ensure the safety of gay American athletes, staff and spectators at the winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia next year, a US congressman said Monday. (RIA Novosti, 08.05.13).
The United States is not considering boycotting the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, despite the high tensions between Washington and Moscow and calls from members of the LGBT community to shun the Games over Russia's anti-gay policies, a White House spokesman said. (Moscow Times, 08.09.13)
The U.S. ambassador to Russia has condemned the Bloodhound Gang, a provocative American rock band, after its bassist desecrated a Russian flag at a concert in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 08.05.13).
The number of Russian speakers in the United States has quadrupled over the last 30 years, surging from 173, 226 to 854,955, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report. (RIA Novosti, 08.08.13).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in good health and a back injury that was reported last year is not a cause for concern, according to the Kremlin's top doctor. (Reuters, 08.05.13).
The natural growth of Russia's population reached almost 7,000 in June, the press service of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection said on Wednesday. In January to June the natural loss of Russia's population totaled 52,900, down by 7.2% year-on-year. (Interfax, 08.07.13).
Moscow police detained more than 1,600 immigrants who had been living and working at a construction site in western Moscow. (Moscow Times, 08.05.13).
The Federal Migration Service has drafted a bill to set up 83 new detention centers for illegal immigrants across the country as Moscow's three holding facilities ran out of space following a week of raids on the city's markets. (The Moscow Times, 08.05.13).
Poll returns from a survey among 1,600 Russians across 42 regions indicate that one in two respondents support the toughening of the country's migration policies. (Itar-Tass, 08.07.13).

Defense:

The Russian Defense Ministry has ordered the development of a computerized biological threat-neutralization system that by the end of 2014 would be able to analyze bacterial and viral DNA in approximately an hour, devise a vaccine and plan for its manufacture. (GSN, 08.05.13).
Robotic avatars may replace humans on the battlefield in the near future, as the Kurchatov Institute has announced its plans to develop the "soldier of the future." (Moscow Times, 08.09.13).
Russia’s missile-attack warning radars are far superior to any foreign counterparts, Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov said after visiting a Voronezh-M radar in Siberia’s Irkutsk Region. (RIA Novosti, 08.02.13).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

The Black Sea Fleet will be tasked with ensuring the safety of athletes and spectators at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a statement Monday. (The Moscow Times, 08.05.13).
Russia's Supreme Court cut former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's jail sentence by two months on Tuesday, allowing one of President Vladimir Putin's biggest critics to walk free in August 2014 after more than a decade behind bars. (Reuters, 08.06.13).
Deputies from Russia's State Duma and senior officials could be questioned by investigators looking into a decade-old case against jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, sparking renewed fears that fresh charges against the once powerful businessman are imminent. (RIA Novosti, 08.08.13).

Foreign affairs and trade:

No deal offering rich arms contacts and protection of Moscow’s gas interests in exchange for Russia withdrawing support for Syrian President Assad was discussed during Vladimir Putin’s talks with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar, the Kremlin said. (Russia Today, 08.09.13).

The European Union's share in Russia's foreign trade increased to $202.7 billion and totaled 50.1% in January-June, the Federal Customs Service said on Tuesday. (Itar-Tass, 08.07.13).
A Russian naval task force, led by the Moskva missile cruiser, arrived Saturday on a visit to the Cuban port of Havana. (RIA Novosti, 08.05.13).

Russia's neighbors:

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that the actions of Georgia toward South Ossetia in August 2008 were acts of military aggression and that he was certain the decision he made then as commander-in-chief was correct. "There was a chance for peaceful development of the situation until the order was given to storm Tskhinval," Medvedev said. (Interfax, 08.06.13).
Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has said that Russia cannot leave Georgia's NATO aspirations without attention. "I would like to remind you that Russia is a very big country with a huge nuclear arsenal and this cannot be disregarded. If there emerges a country that is a member of another military and political alliance, whose nuclear missiles, as it is known, are targeted at facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation, Russia cannot leave this without attention," Medvedev said. (Rustavi-2, BBC, 08.06.13).
The Russian government had no intention to occupy Tbilisi and topple the Mikheil Saakashvili regime in its peace enforcement operation against Georgia in August 2008, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. (Interfax, 08.04.13).
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has said on the eve of the fifth anniversary of war between Georgia and Russia that he tried to avert the conflict by proposing that Georgia would abandon ambitions to join NATO in return for Moscow's help with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. (RFE/RL, 08.08.13).
The Georgian prime minister's special envoy for relations with Russia, Zurab Abashidze, has said that Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev's recent comments defending his country's decision to go to war with Georgia in 2008 were "not unexpected" and that he still believed that relations with Russia would improve "gradually". Our position is that in 2008, we became the victims of aggression, but unfortunately many wrong steps were taken by our side and many dramatic mistakes were made,” he said. (Rustavi-2, 08.04.13).
"In fact, it was certainly possible to avoid that conflict, which had been brewing for several years. However, considering the deployment of Russian troops in the North Caucasus in the months prior [to the armed conflict] and the processes that had taken place in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region [of South Ossetia], I think it was already too late to influence those processes,” Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Alasania said. "We have no illusions that [a normalization of relations with Russia] will happen quickly," he said. "We see no change in [Russia's] diplomacy with regard to our territorial integrity or Georgia's aspiration to become a member of NATO. We sense no change in Russia's position so far." (RFE/RL, 08.08.13).
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Tajikistan’s Nuclear and Radiation Safety Agency signed a memorandum of understanding on April 29, 2013, that will strengthen their efforts to deter, detect and interdict the illicit smuggling of special nuclear and other radiological materials. (NNSA, 08.05.13).

If you wish to either unsubscribe from or subscribe to Russia in Review, please e-mail Simon Saradzhyan at simon_saradzhyan@hks.harvard.edu.