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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 December 14-21, 2012.

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for the week of December 14-21, 2012

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

Nuclear security agenda:

  • NNSA’s list of its most important accomplishments and improvements over the past year includes its 50th HEU recovery to date. The Global Threat Reduction Initiative efforts have secured more than 1,900 kilograms of Russian-origin HEU, enough for more than 75 nuclear weapons. (NNSA, 12.17.12).
  • The nearly complete U.S. defense authorization bill for fiscal 2013 would mandate that the federal government construct a new nuclear weapons lab and storage facility in New Mexico by 2026. (GSN, 12.19.12).
  • More than four months after three protesters broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex, a hole that the trio cut in a perimeter fence still hasn’t been repaired, an Oak Ridge group said Wednesday. But in a statement Thursday afternoon, federal officials said the fence has been repaired. (Oak Ridge Today, 12.20.12).

Iran nuclear issues:

  • Russia hopes the next round of six-power talks with Iran to resolve a protracted dispute over its atomic program will take place in January. "Currently, negotiations are under way with Tehran on the place and date," the foreign ministry spokesman said. (Reuters, 12.20.12).

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

  • A planned air cargo route for NATO countries' military equipment from Afghanistan via Ulyanovsk is being tested and should be operating soon, NATO’s General Knud Bartels said. (Moscow Times, 12.17.12).

Missile defense:

  • “We see a threat because our partners create such systems. This leads to nullifying of our missile-nuclear potential, substantially undermining the strategic balance in the world. We stepped over the Cuban Missile Crisis precisely because such a balance emerged – no one wants mutual destruction… I don’t think we are enemies. We simply need to be patient and look for compromises,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told a Thursday press conference. (Russian-language version of Kremlin.ru, unofficial translation, 12.20.12).
  • The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a $633 billion defense bill for next year. The bill watered down a House effort to require construction of an East Coast missile defense site, instead pressing the Pentagon to study three possible locations. (AP, 12.20.12).
  • Romania and the United States on Tuesday inked three additional papers necessary to move ahead with plans to deploy U.S. missile interceptors in the Eastern European state. (GSN, 12.19.12).

Nuclear arms control:

  • Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev ruled out total nuclear disarmament, but said the consequences of even a "limited nuclear intervention" are so catastrophic that it makes the usage of such weapons absolutely impossible.  He also said that "the atomic weapons of leading western counties are aimed mainly against Russia.” "In these conditions and given the insufficient strength of Russia's conventional armed forces the preservation of the nuclear potential is a priority task." (Russia Today, 12.18.12).
  • The Senate faces the loss of much of its institutional knowledge of complicated nuclear weapons. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is retiring, Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) failed in his re-election bid, and John Kerry (D-Mass.) is widely anticipated to be nominated to become the next secretary of state. (GSN, 12.18.12).
  • Retired Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, warned the Obama administration this week that China’s short-range nuclear missiles are undermining the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He also said U.S. and Western arms specialists have dramatically underestimated China’s nuclear arsenal. Beijing’s warhead arsenal, he said, likely is between 1,600 to 1,800 nuclear warheads and bombs. (Washington Free Beacon, 12.14.12).
  • Russian nuclear arms expert Igor Sutyagin has suggested in a new analysis that Moscow maintains close to 1,000 nonstrategic warheads that could “reasonably be available for use within the constraints of a general nuclear war.” Other projections have put the figure closer to 2,000, he said. (GSN, 12.21.12).
  • A new report from the Federation of American Scientists finds that Russia and the United States have slowed the rate at which they reduce their nuclear arsenals. The U.S. stockpile of strategic and tactical nuclear warheads presently stands at roughly 4,650, down from more than 19,000 in 1991, according to FAS Nuclear Information Project Director Hans Kristensen. Russia has seemingly seen its corresponding arsenal of active and reserve warheads drop from 30,000 warheads to about 4,500 over the same post-Cold War period. (GSN, 12.18.12).

Counter-terrorism cooperation:

  • No significant developments.

Cyber security:

  • No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

  • No significant developments.

Access to major markets for exports and imports:

  • U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a declaration formally granting Russia "permanent normal trade relations" after U.S. lawmakers earlier this month voted to lift Cold War-era trade sanctions on the Kremlin.  (RFE/RL, 12.21.12).

Other bilateral issues:

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin sent condolences to his U.S. counterpart Saturday over the Connecticut school shooting tragedy. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev also expressed his condolences on Friday and spoke out against lax gun laws in response to the shooting. (Xinhua, Russia Today, Moscow Times, 12.17.12).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at the U.S. for what he called hypocritical attacks on his government's human-rights record. His harshest words came for the Magnitsky bill. "They themselves have plenty of problems" with human-rights violations, "Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, they keep people in jail for years without charges," he told a Thursday press conference. (Wall Street Journal, 12.21.12).
  • President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signaled that a proposed ban on U.S. adoptions could not come into force for at least a year because of Russia’s obligations under a new agreement.  Approved on Friday by the State Duma, the bill was proposed in response to the Magnitsky Act that was signed into law last week by U.S. President Barack Obama. According to the Russian government, there were 956 Russian children adopted by families from the United States in 2011 -- the most of any country. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s education minister both spoke out against the amendment and the speaker of the upper house Valentina Matviyenko cautioned that the lower house was being guided by emotions rather than good sense. (RFE/RL, Moscow Times, New York Times, 12.21.12, AP, 12.19.12).
  • Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov thinks that the phrase of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about re-Sovietizing CIS countries is an indication of her incompetence about the processes taking place in the region. (Interfax, 12.19.12).
  • Russian engineer Viktor Chumakov – who leads the effort to preserve Cyrillic-alphabet letter, ë, in the Russian alphabet alleges that this letter is falling out of usage as a result of secret efforts by CIA. "There is absolutely no truth to this allegation," a CIA spokesman said in an email. "The Agency supports the practice of good grammar and pronunciation in any language." (Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, 12.17.12, 12.20.12).

II. Russia news.

 

Domestic Politics, Economy and Energy:

  • Asked about charges that Russia is authoritarian, Putin said that a fair observer of the country’s politics could see that it is not. "If I believed that the authoritarian system was the most suitable for us," Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "I would have changed the constitution" so as to stay on as president in 2008. (Washington Post, 12.21.12).
  • Foreign forces trying to spark "a color revolution" in Russia won't succeed, Russia's Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev said. (RIA Novosti, 12.18.12).
  • Thousands of opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday crowded into a Moscow square, vowing not to let up pressure on their government after a year of protests. (Washington Post, 12.15.12).
  • Russian arms exports reached a record $14 billion this year. (Reuters, 12.17.12)
  • During the next few months, Russian officials will fully reopen the country's domestic bond market to foreign investors, completing a liberalization that started last year. The moves could flood Russia's roughly $60 billion sovereign-debt market with an additional $25 billion to $40 billion in the next two years, estimates Barclays PLC. (Wall Street Journal, 12.19.12).
  • The true flow of capital from Russia is less than half of the tens of billions of dollars annually reported by the central bank, but Russian Direct Investment Fund said Monday. Calling the central bank's figure for 2011 net capital outflow of $80.5 billion "a myth," the report says the real net outflow last year was closer to $32.3 billion, in line with the data from the World Bank. (Wall Street Journal, 12.18.12).
  • Since temperatures plunged below minus 18 degrees Celsius in Moscow and minus 50 C in Siberia, more than 50 people have died from weather-related illnesses. (Moscow Times, 12.21.12).

Defense:

  • Russian strategic missile forces will put on service about 100 new Topol-M and Yars missiles by the end of this year, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. With the deployment, "the share of modern weapons in the strategic missile forces will approach 30 percent," ministry spokesman Vadim Koval told reporters. (Xinhua, 12.18.12)
  • Russia's Strategic Missile Force (RSVN) plans to test-fire 11 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2013, after firing only five this year. (RIA Novosti, 12.14.12).
  • Russia’s Sevmash shipyard will float out a third Borey class strategic nuclear submarine, the Vladimir Monomakh, on December 30. (RIA Novosti, 12.19.12).

Security and law-enforcement:

  • Russia's Security Council Chief Nikolai Patrushev said the nation’s security services are taking additional measures to monitor the region ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and a similar approach is taken to Tatarstan, that is set to host the 2013 Summer Universiade. Patrushev also said that rebels in the volatile North Caucasus have become harder to catch since they changed their tactics. (RIA Novosti, 12.18.12).
  • Andrei Przhezdomsky of Russia's Counterterrorism Committee said some 360 "militants' were killed so far this year, "99 percent of them in the North Caucasus. He said the number of victims of terrorism in 2012 decreased to 58 from 128 in 2011. Przhezdomsky said 466 improvised explosive devices were seized, including 21 suicide bomber belts. (RFE/RL, 12.14.12).
  • A court on Thursday reduced jailed former billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky's sentence so he may be released two years early, in 2014. Russian president Vladimir Putin said the issue should not be politicized and noted that at some point Mr. Khodorkovsky would be free. (New York Times, 12.21.12).
  • Russian opposition activist Aleksei Navalny has been charged with multimillion fraud and money-laundering.  (RFE/RL, 12.20.12).
  • Russia's Investigative Committee intends to examine reports the Russian opposition received training in so-called 'orange revolution' tactics at a special camp in Lithuania. (Russia Today. 12.20.12).

Foreign affairs:

  • President Vladimir  Putin began his first talks in Brussels on Friday since his re-election earlier this year. Energy, trade, and Syria were on the agenda, and the discussions were expected to be tense. (New York Times, 12.22.12).
  • "We are not concerned with the fate of Assad's regime," Russian President Vladimir Putin told a Thursday press conference. "We understand what is going on, given that the [Assad] family has been in power for 40 years and that the need for change is certainly on the agenda." Mr. Putin expressed worry that the Assad government and the Syrian opposition could merely switch places, with the rebels in power but with the fighting unabated. Putin pointed to Libya as his evidence that intervention by the NATO alliance of Western nations had caused more harm than good. (LA Times, 12.20.12, New York Times, 12.21.12).
  • Armed men kidnapped two Russian steel-plant workers and an Italian colleague in Syria. Russia’s contingency plans for an evacuation from Syria could accommodate as many as 30,000 Russian citizens. A Russian navy squadron has set off for the Mediterranean amid official talk about a possible evacuation of Russians from Syria. (New York Times, AP, 12.21.12).
  • China's new head of the Communist Party Xi Jinping plans to make his first official visit to Russia. (Voice of Russia, 12.19.12).
  • The government of the United Arab Emirates said Monday it has signed an agreement with Russia on the development and use of civilian nuclear power. (RFE/RL, 12.17.12).
  • The UN Security Council on Monday extended the work of the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, but Russia abstained from the vote because it said the resolution did not address inefficiencies of the court. (Moscow Times, 12.19.12).
  • Russia’s foreign minister has promised his Polish counterpart that Russia will return as soon as possible the wreckage from the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others. (AP, 12.17.12).
  • Russia denied on Friday it had a role in the death of Kremlin critic and former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London six years ago. (Reuters, 12.14.12).

Russia's neighbors:

  • President Vladimir Putin met on Wednesday separately with the leaders of Belarus and Armenia before engaging the head of resource-rich Kazakhstan about ways to more closely bind the neighbours' economies. He also attended the Collective Treaty Security Organization summit.  At the summit CSTO members accepted Uzbekistan's decision to suspend its membership. (Reuters, 12.20.12, RFE/RL, 12.19.12).
  • Two former ministers and four other people have reportedly been arrested in Georgia as part of a corruption investigation. (RFE/RL, 12.20.12).
  • Reiterating Kazakhstan's determination to establish a nuclear weapon free zone in Central Asia, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said his government supports the efforts of the international community to counter nuclear terrorism. (Kazaen, 12.19.12).

 

Please note that the next issue of Russia in Review is to be distributed on January 4, 2012.

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