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Russia in Review

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Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for April 20 - May 3, 2013

 

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for April 26 - May 3, 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 on Tuesday that the next round of negotiations between Tehran and the P5+1 group should be held as soon as possible. (Press TV, 05.02.13).

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

  • No significant developments.

Missile defense:

  • After meeting with U.S. Defense Undersecretary James Miller in Brussels on Tuesday, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov called for further talks said the talks did not resolve all Russian concerns about planned U.S. anti-missile systems in Europe. "The cancellation of the fourth stage is not the problem. Essentially, nothing has changed," Antonov said. “One of our greatest problems with Americans is the absence of predictability. How can you get involved in any project, if you don't know how the results of the project are going to be used?” he said. (GSN, Interfax, 05.01.13).
  • The decision of the U.S. side to postpone the fourth stage of the adaptive program of missile defense increases the window of opportunities for reaching an understanding on missile defense that would suit both sides, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has said. (Interfax, 05.01.13).
  • Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Frank A. Rose said: “Through transparency and cooperation with the United States and NATO, Russia would see firsthand that this system is designed for ballistic missile threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area, and that NATO missile defense systems can neither negate nor undermine Russia’s strategic deterrent capabilities.”(U.S. State Department, 05.01.13).

Nuclear arms control:

  • No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism cooperation//the Boston marathon bombing:

  • U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, say their two countries will increase security and intelligence cooperation in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings. The two leaders spoke by phone on April 29. The White House said Obama expressed his "appreciation" of Russia's close cooperation after the attack. While speaking with Putin, Obama also emphasized U.S. concerns about chemical weapons in Syria. Yuri Ushakov, a top Putin aide, said the two presidents ''reached a practical agreement on most active contacts'' between Russian and American intelligence services. Putin's spokesman  Dmitri Peskov said cooperation between the countries' counterterrorism and intelligence services had improved to new levels and “this aroused praise from Putin and Obama, and their satisfaction.” The White House offered a more reserved account of the two leaders' conversation, noting ''the close cooperation that the United States has received from Russia on the Boston Marathon attack.'' (New York Times, RFE/RL, 04.30.13).
  • President Obama defended said that Russia has been cooperative in providing information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's travels to Russia in 2012 and its warnings in 2011 to the FBI and the CIA. But he also alluded to decades of distrust between the countries."Obviously old habits die hard," he said. "There are still suspicions sometimes between our intelligence and law enforcement agencies that date back 10, 20, 30 years, back to the Cold War." (Boston Globe, 05.01.13).
  • Russia has provided the FBI with all necessary information on Tamerlan Tsarnayev, suspected of carrying out the terrorist attack at the Boston marathon, White House press secretary Jay Carney said. (Interfax, 04.30.13).
  • "I think they have information that would be incredibly helpful that they haven't provided yet," Mike Rogers, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee chief, said. "You have to remember the FSB is a hostile service to the FBI and the CIA. There's a cultural problem there between where the Russians are and our folks." (Bloomberg, 05.01.13).
  • Tamerlan Tsarnaev caught the eye of the Federal Security Service when this security service’s agents noticed him in the company of Mahmoud Mansour Nidal, 18, in April 2012 in Dagestan, a Russian security official said.  According to Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee,  Nidal was a suspected jihadist recruiter, who participated in a group of Islamist insurgents based in the forests around the Dagestani village of Gubden. Nidal was killed after throwing a grenade at Russian law-enforcers in May. Tamerlan Tsarnaev also exchanged notes over the Internet with William Plotnikov, a boxer who moved with his parents from Russia to Canada before joining militants in Dagestan. Plotnikov died in mid-July, during a raid in the hinterland of Utamysh, a village southwest of Makhachkala, Russian officials said. Two days later Tsarnaev left for the United States without picking up a Russian passport that had been prepared for him at the local migration office in Dagestan's capital. "He intended to join the fighters, but he lost his contacts," one Russian official claimed. "In the end he picked an easier enemy in Boston." ( Novaya Gazeta, 04.29.13, Wall Street Journal, 04.30.13,  Washington Post, 04.30.13).
  • Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s father Anzor Tsarnaev acknowledged that Tamerlan had occasionally prayed at a mosque on Kotrova Street in Makhachkala that is known as a gathering spot for some Salafists with extremist views. (New York Times, 04.29.13).
  • Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s mother  Zubeidat Tsarnaeva described at least one instance in which her son was stopped by the police along the beach in Makhachkala, where Mr. Tsarnaev’s parents live, and brought in for questioning. (New York Times, 04.29.13).
  • In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad. The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn't speak the language there, according to U.S. officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S. after the bombings. In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region of Russia who was under FBI investigation. (CBC.ca, 04.28.13).
  • Zubeidat Tsarnaeva and her son Tamerlan were placed at the same time in late 2011 on the Terror Identities Datamart Environment database, a low-level watch list that contains the names of more than 500,000 people flagged by multiple U.S. security agencies. (New York Times, 04.26.13).
  • U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday filed criminal charges against three friends of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect and said two of them threw away a backpack that contained evidence. Two of the newly charged men -- Dias Kadyrbayev, 19 years old, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 19 -- are nationals of Kazakhstan.(Wall Street Journal, 05.02.13).

Cyber security:

  • White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel and coordinator for cyber issues Christopher Painter were to discuss steps toward achieving mutual trust between Moscow and Washington in cyberspace on Monday. A U.S. State Department official told the newspaper that the talks could lead to an intergovernmental agreement on cybersecurity and the establishment of a working group on information security in the U.S.-Russian Presidential Commission. . (Moscow Times/Kommersant, 04.30.13).

Energy exports from CIS:

  • Russia, the world's biggest oil producer, boosted crude and condensate production 1.5 percent in April from a year earlier to 10.47 million barrels a day, close to a post-Soviet era record.  (Bloomberg, 05.02.13).

Bilateral economic ties:

  • Russia remains in the U.S. intellectual property rights "priority watch list", according to the "Special 301" Report released by the Office of the United States Trade Representative on Wednesday, May 1. (Itar-Tass, 05.01.13).

Other bilateral issues:

  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he is hopeful that the talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be useful. Lavrov noted that the talks with Kerry were expected to focus on strategic stability in all aspects, including missile defence. Kerry will make a visit to Russia on May 7-8. (Itar-Tass, 03.02.12).
  • The U.S. space agency is paying $424 million more to Russia to get U.S. astronauts into space and home again, and the agency's leader is blaming Congress for the extra expense. (AP, 05.01.13).
  • A group of top Russian child psychologists, psychiatrists and educators have appealed to President Vladimir Putin to allow about 100 Russian children who were in the final stages of the adoption process to be allowed to join their new U.S. parents. (Moscow Times, 05.03.13).

II. Russia news.

 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

  • Economic Development Minister Andrei Belousov has warned that Russia has "three, four, a maximum of five years" to carry out structural reforms to the economy before the global energy balance changes, possibly leading to a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in oil prices and economic stagnation. (Moscow Times, 04.30.13).
  • Russia's OAO Gazprom said Tuesday its 2012 net profit fell 11% on lower gas sales to Europe and retroactive discounts to European customers. Booming shale-gas production in the U.S. has freed up vast quantities of other fuel from around the world. With that new leverage, Gazprom's European customers have squeezed billions of dollars in discounts from the company, and they are pressing for more. (Wall Street Journal, 05.01.13, Dow Jones, 04.30.13).
  • Russia will expend one trillion rubles ($31.3 billion) to develop its nuclear power industry through to 2015. Russia’s next-generation nuclear power plants will have an improved safety design, as well as an improved water desalination system. (Russia Today, 05.01.13).
  • President Vladimir Putin awarded Hero of Labor awards to the director of the Mariinsky Theater and four other people on Wednesday as he resurrected another symbol of the Soviet era. (Moscow Times, 05.01.13).
  • The mass inspections of non-commercial organizations throughout all of Russia have also reached the sociological services. Inspectors from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office came to the Levada Center, which has been conducting sociological polls for many years. (Polit.ru, 05.25.13).

Defense:

  • Moscow later this year will deploy the first of its new intercontinental ballistic missiles called the Yars-M. Details of the missile are being kept secret, but it has been described as a fifth-generation strategic nuclear system that Russian officials say will be able to penetrate U.S. missile defenses using a new type of fuel that requires a shorter burn time for booster engines. (Washington Times, 05.01.13).
  • Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said arms firms are in the "early stages" of preparing a new railway-based ICBM launcher. (GSN, 04.26.13).
  • Three nuclear submarines of the Russian Navy currently under maintenance will be recommissioned by 2014. (RIA Novosti, 05.01.13).

Security and law-enforcement:

  • Russian security forces in Dagestan killed two men in a counterterrorism operation on Sunday; officials said one of the men was a suspect in a series of bomb attacks on local police convoys. (New York Times, 04.29.13).
  • A bomb has killed at least two people in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. (RFE/RL, 05.01.13).
  • A jury at the Moscow City Court has found Yusup Temerkhanov, an ethnic Chechen, guilty of the murder of former Russian Army Colonel Yury Budanov. (RFE/RL, 04.30.13).

Foreign affairs and trade:

  • Moscow believes using the issue of the alleged deployment of weapons of mass destruction in the Syrian conflict to attain geopolitical goals is unacceptable, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday. (RIA Novosti, 04.29.13).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have agreed to increase efforts to resolve a territorial dispute over North Pacific islands that has prevented the two countries from signing a treaty formally ending World War ll. The meeting in Moscow on April 29 was the first between Russian and Japanese leaders in a decade. (RFE/RL, 04.29.13).
  • India's largest importer of liquefied natural gas Petronet LNG is negotiating with Gazprom to supply between three million and four million metric tons a year of the fuel. (Wall Street Journal, 05.02.13).
  • Ireland has dropped plans to impose U.S.-style Magnitsky sanctions on Russia after Moscow warned that it might respond by banning Irish parents from adopting Russian children. (Moscow Times, 05.03.13).

Russia's neighbors:

  • The new prime minister of Georgia said recently that he is investigating whether the previous government had a connection to Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but that notion is "ridiculous," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said. "Maybe the suspect in Boston terrorist attack had some kind of contact with terrorists trained in Georgia," Bidzina Ivanishvili, the prime minister, said in an interview with Georgian TV station Rustavi 2. He added that his government was "investigating the possibility."  (Foreign Policy, 05.02.13).
  • High-placed Georgian police officials recruited 120 residents of the North Caucasus republics in Europe in 2012 to train them and use them in subversive operations in Chechnya and Dagestan, Georgia's ombudsman Ucha Nanuashvili said. Tbilisi might have encouraged Chechen separatists, former Georgian State Security Minister Valery Khaburdzania told a press conference on Wednesday.  (Interfax, 04.30.13, 05.01.13 Interfax, 05.30.13).
  • "We are very supportive of Georgia's aspirations with respect to NATO and Europe," US Secretary of State John Kerry said before his meeting with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia on Wednesday. “We are very grateful in the United States for the assistance that Georgia has given us with respect to Afghanistan,” he said. (RIA Novosti, U.S. State Department, 05.01.13).
  • Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili said before his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry: “ We want American support for NATO. We want America’s support of further … integration.” (U.S. State Department, 05.01.13).
  • Addressing the 83rd Rose-Roth seminar of NATO's Parliamentary Assembly in Tbilisi, Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili said his government needs assistance from international partners to reestablish ties with Russia disrupted in 2008 after short war with Moscow over Georgia's breakaway territory of South Ossetia. (Interfax, 04.29.13).
  • The new government of Georgia is taking a new look at one of the unsolved mysteries left over from the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union: the shooting death of a C.I.A. officer, Freddie Woodruff, on a dusty road on the outskirts of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, 20 years ago. (New York Times, 04.29.13).
  • Georgian athletes will take part in the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. (RFE/RL, 05.02.13).
  • A Boeing 707 jet used by the U.S. military for midair refueling has crashed near the border between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It was not immediately clear how many people had been on board the plane.(Moscow Times, 05.03.13).
  • A  Russian government commission had approved a proposal by the Federal Drug Control Service  to establish a Russian-led "corporation of cooperation" with the countries of Central Asia. The purpose is to create jobs so as to distract the region's population from becoming involved in the drug trade from Afghanistan.  (Kommersant, 04.30.13).
  • The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the detention of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko before and during her trial on abuse-of-office charges was arbitrary and a violation of her rights. (RFE/RL, 04.30.13).
  • Ukraine's presidential pardon commission has said it is too soon to consider pardoning jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. (RFE/RL, 04.27.13).
  • Freedom House released the annual "Freedom of the Press" report on May 1. North Korea and Turkmenistan tied for the title of the worst country for media freedom, with Uzbekistan and Belarus close behind in the report. Georgia and Armenia were praised for showing strong improvements, but Azerbaijan’s media environment had deteriorated. (RFE/RL, 05.01.13).
  • The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2013 report that Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan are among the world's worst violators of religious freedom.  (RFE/RL, 04.30.13).
  • The Kyrgyz State Committee for National Security is trying to find out who distributed posters expressing support for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (RFE/RL, 05.03.13).

 

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