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Russia in Review

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Abstract

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for February 19-26, 2016

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

Nuclear security:

  • Traditional cooperation between the United States and Russia on nuclear nonproliferation issues has reached an impasse, US National Nuclear Security Administration head Frank Klotz told Sputnik. The NNSA requested a 6.4 percent decrease in funding for nonproliferation activities in 2017 as a result of the lack of cooperation with Russia. (Sputnik, 02.18.16).
  • An Italian barge and floating dock designed for Russia to further assist in transporting Soviet legacy nuclear waste to safe storage will soon be towed to the port of Murmansk. (Bellona, 02.19.16).
  • The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday of the dangers of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists and urged world nations to ratify the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. Yukiya Amano said the application of this convention would "reduce the likelihood of terrorists being able to detonate a ...'dirty bomb,'" which can spread radioactivity over a wide area and also reduce the risk of an attack on a nuclear power plant. (AP, 02.22.16).
  • Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon. (Reuters, 02.21.16).

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

  • The construction of two more units of the Bushehr nuclear power plant are due to start in the nearest future, the head of Russia’s Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation said last Friday. (Teheran Times, 02.21.16).
  • Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Iran to meet his counterpart to discuss military cooperation. Shoigu also handed a special message of Vladimir Putin about regulation of the situation in Syria over to the President of Iran (Rossiyskaya Gazeta/WPS, 02.24.16).

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

  • The North Atlantic Alliance is open for a dialogue with Russia, does not want a confrontation with this country and a new Cold War, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. (Interfax, 02.23.16).
  • NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove said Thursday that Russia has "chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat" to the United States and its European allies. "Russia is extending its course of influence yet further afield to try to reestablish a leading role on the world stage," he said. Breedlove's remarks at the House Armed Services Committee drew caustic denials from the Russian Defense Ministry later in the day. “Such tide rises every year at the same time," the ministry said. (Moscow Times, 02.26.16).
  • Russia filed a request Monday to fly a spy plane carrying advanced digital cameras over the United States in accordance with the Treaty on Open Skies. (Washington Post, 02.24.16).
  • Both China and Russia have fielded anti-ship missiles speedier than those now in the U.S. inventory, U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris said. Like China Russia is also a Pacific threat, modernizing its fleet of Oscar-class multipurpose attack nuclear submarines and producing the new Yasen-class, he said. (Bloomberg, 02.23.16).
  • The U.S. military test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile in a week on Thursday night, seeking to demonstrate its nuclear arms capacity at a time of rising strategic tensions with Russia and North Korea. (Bloomberg, 02.25.16).

Missile defense:

  • The National Missile Defense program based in Alaska and California, which is designed to protect the United States from a North Korean or Iranian missile attack, continues to be unreliable. That is the conclusion of a February 17, 2016 General Accountability Office report on missile defense concerning the Ground-Based Midcourse system. (Nukes of Hazard Blog, 02.25.16).

Nuclear arms control:

  • No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

  • Russia and the United States are exchanging intelligence on terrorists in Syria, says Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. "We have launched an exchange of information, and there have been contacts with the military," Zakharova said. (Interfax, 02.25.16).
  • After months of cautious silence, Egypt acknowledged for the first time on Wednesday that terrorists had downed the Russian jetliner that broke up over the Sinai Peninsula in the fall. (New York Times, 02.25.16).
  • A Tajik woman has been sentenced to prison for joining the extremist Islamic State (IS) group and calling on Tajik youth to join "jihad" in Syria. (RFE/RL, 02.24.16).

Cyber security:

  • The U.S. government has concluded for the first time that a December power outage in Ukraine affecting 225,000 customers was the result of a cyberattack. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said its assessment was based on interviews with six Ukrainian organizations affected by the blackout.  (RFE/RL, 02.26.16).
  • Russia is mounting a far-reaching cyber espionage campaign against Syrian opposition groups and NGOs. (Financial Times, 02.19.16).

Energy exports from CIS:

  • “We need at least one year” to cut the global glut, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on a plane flying from Moscow to Minsk in Belarus on Thursday. Major oil-producing countries may agree on a freeze in mid-March and could evaluate “if the mechanism works” in June, he said. (Bloomberg, 02.25.16).
  • Venezuela oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino said late Thursday that four oil-producing countries, including his country, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, will meet again in mid-March to discuss efforts to stabilize the market. (Wall Street Journal, 02.26.16).

Bilateral economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

Other bilateral issues:

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin was in a cheerful mood this week when he told his nation that he had just sealed a deal with U.S. President Barack Obama on a limited truce in Syria going into effect midnight Friday. Over the course of his statement to the nation, he repeatedly mentioned "Russia and the U.S.," "Russian and American experts," "the Russian Federation or our American partners" - nine such mentions in all over the course of five minutes. (Washington Post, 02.26.16).
  • The U.S. government has urged some of the nation’s largest banks to refrain from helping Russia sell bonds, according to people with knowledge of the situation, as helping the nation obtain foreign funding risks undermining sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict. (Bloomberg, 02.25.16).
  • Fighting drug trafficking rings that partially fund the Afghan insurgency had been an area of common interest for the Russians and the Americans, said Yuri V. Krupnov, an adviser to the head of Russia’s antidrug agency, Viktor P. Ivanov. But that stopped when the United States Treasury Department in 2014 imposed sanctions on Mr. Ivanov. (New York Times, 02.22.16).
  • Sen. Richard Shelby said: “If Sen. McCain is genuine in his concerns about the U.S. enriching Vladimir Putin, why not seek to ban other items imported from Russia like the $151 million in arms and ammunition, the more than $20 billion in oil and petroleum products and even the $326 million of crustaceans?”(Wall Street Journal, 02.22.16).
  • According to SIPRI, during the last five years, the U.S. and Russia sold 33 percent and 25 percent of all arms sold in the world. China was third, a long way behind (5.9 percent). (Interfax, 02.25.16).
  • The United States will return to Russia more than 20 valuable historical documents which were stolen from Russian archives in the early 1990s, the Kommersant newspaper reported Friday. Among a total of 28 documents are authentic orders of Russian rulers including Peter the Great, as well as papers signed by former Soviet leader Josef Stalin. (Moscow Times, 02.26.16).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin claims Western countries are getting ready to interfere in the parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall. Speaking at the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Moscow on February 26, Putin said that "enemies abroad" were "getting ready for the elections." Putin also said that foreign secret services "have increased their activities in Russia lately" and urged FSB to "block any access to any confidential information." (RFE/RL, 02.26.16).
  • Deutsche Bank economists estimate that the oil price required to balance the Russian budget this year is about $66 a barrel, down from more than $103 in 2014. At currently projected levels of spending and revenue, the Deutsche Bank folks figure that the government will take more than three years to burn through its reserves. (Bloomberg, 02.22.16).
  • As Russia hunkers down for the second year of recession, most economists say a parliamentary election in September won’t unleash the kind of protests that rattled the country in 2011. There’s a 30 percent chance that economic distress will translate into political unrest, according to the median of 27 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. (Bloomberg, 02.25.16).
  • A total of 59.8 percent of residents of Russia's single-industry towns consider their socio-economic situation to be unbearable or hardly bearable, the RBC newspaper reported Thursday, citing a poll by the Federal Guard Service (FSO). (Moscow Times, 02.25.16).
  • Ilya Yashin, one of Russia's most prominent opposition leaders called for the resignation of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, calling him a "time bomb" threatening security and stability in the country. Mr. Kadyrov dismissed the report. (Wall Street Journal, 02.24.16).
  • Prominent Russian political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky fearing possible persecution due to a recent article he published that prosecutors say contains "signs" of extremism.  (RFE/RL, 02.19.16).

Defense and Aerospace:

  • Russian military institutions are working on a program of robotization of the army that will introduce combat robots able to act independently on the battlefield, deputy head of the Defense Ministry Pavel Popov said. (Moscow Times, 02.22.16).
  • Russia hopes to build a space-based missile defense warning system to complement its ground-based air and missile defenses. “We’re actively moving along the way of creating a completely new generation of armaments and military hardware for air and space defense, which will help make our facilities fully secure from a potential enemy’s sudden missile attack,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said. (National Interest, 02.22.16).
  • The Russian Navy is set to upgrade its nuclear-powered Project 11442 Kirov-class battle cruiser Pyotr Veliky with new hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile 3M22 Zircon. (National Interest, 02.22.16).
  • Russia plans to spend $2.4 billion on the Black Sea Fleet by 2020, including the most modern surface ships and submarines, as well as integrated air-defense and amphibious-landing capacities. (RFE/RL, 02.23.16).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

  • The Sova Center identified 38 people who had suffered xenophobic attacks motivated by their ethnicity in Russia in 2015, compared to 101 the year before. (RFE/RL, 02.19.16)
  • A Moscow court has ordered Dmitry Kamenshchik, the owner of Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, to be put under house arrest, amid an unusual public disagreement between investigators and prosecutors about the case. He is accused by the national Investigative Committee of failing to meet safety requirements. (RFE/RL, 02.19.16).
  • The former head of Russia's Anti-Doping Agency, Nikita Kamayev, contacted a British newspaper shortly before his sudden death offering to expose the country's development of performance-enhancing drugs. (RFE/RL, 02.21.16).
  • The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russia violated opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's right to a fair trial, and has ordered the government to pay him 56,000 euros in legal costs and damages. (RFE/RL, 02.23.16).
  • Estonian authorities say they have jailed three men convicted of spying for Russia. (RFE/RL, 02.23.16).

Foreign affairs and trade:

  • Syria:
    • Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes escalated attacks on insurgents and civilians around the country on Friday, as nearly 100 rebel groups announced they had agreed to a partial cease-fire set to go into effect within hours on Friday. U.S. President Obama has earlier sealed the final terms of the arrangement for the ceasefire in a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Putin also held phone conversations on the ceasefire with leaders of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the course of his conversation with Putin Bashar al-Assad promised to the Russian leader to stand by the cease-fire. The truce won't bring a complete halt of fighting, as it allows continued attacks on Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Staffan de Mistura, UN envoy for the Syrian conflict, said on Thursday that he was preparing to set a date for peace negotiations to resume in Geneva. (Washington Post, 02.24.16, Wall Street Journal, 02.25.16, Wall Street Journal, 02.26.16, New York Times, 02.26.16).
    • Russia and the United States are preparing by Friday to exchange maps delineating their separate assessments of where the Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra are located in Syria. (Washington Post, 02.25.16).
    • Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that militants in eastern Syria were already voicing their desire to comply with the cease-fire deal agreed between Washington and Moscow. But he said he hoped the U.S. would remain clear to the U.S. that the fight against groups labeled as “terrorists" by the U.N. wouldn't be protected under the deal. (Wall Street Journal, 02.26.16).
    • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday the White House has a “plan B” in place if a recent agreement with Russia on a cease-fire for Syria fails. U.S. officials cautioned that options under "Plan B" would probably not be directly aimed at punishing Russia but more likely at increased U.S. support for vetted groups of fighters on the ground battling the Russian-backed forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Moscow Times, 02.24.16, Washington Post, 02.25.16).
    • U.S. President Barack Obama's top military and intelligence advisers, convinced Russia won't abide by a cease-fire in Syria, are pushing for ways to increase pressure on Moscow, including expanding covert military assistance for some rebels now taking a pounding from Russian airstrikes. (Wall Street Journal, 02.23.16).
    • Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that while there was no guarantee the U.S. and Russian-backed cease-fire would succeed, it was a step in the right direction.  Earlier Lavrov has questioned whether U.S. officials and Washington's allies were committed to the truce. (Wall Street Journal, 02.25.16, Wall Street Journal, 02.26.16).
    • If the U.S. doesn't take action to prevent moderate rebel forces from being wiped out by the Russian-backed offensive, then the Saudis or some other group could decide to break ranks with Washington and send large numbers of MANPADs into northern Syria to shoot down Russian bombers, U.S. intelligence agencies have warned policy makers, increasing the chances of a wider conflict. (Wall Street Journal, 02.23.16).
    • The Islamic State has been taking advantage of Russian airstrikes in Syria, using the newfound air cover to maneuver and reposition fighters, according to a report released by IHS Janes' Terrorism and Insurgency Center on Wednesday. (Washington Post, 02.24.16).
    • Russia says it has opened a coordination center to help enforce a cease-fire in Syria. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on February 23 that the center is located at Syria's Hmeimim air base hosting Russian warplanes. (RFE/RL, 02.23.16).
    • Jihadist opposition groups in Syria claimed to have set off a car bomb at a Russian military base outside Latakia, killing several Russian generals. The Kremlin has not commented on the report. (Moscow Times, 02.25.16).
  • Other countries:
    • Japanese media are reporting that U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Prime Minister Shinzo Abe not to visit Russia in May for talks with President Vladimir Putin. But Abe refused to comply with Obama's request in a phone conversation on February 9, and he remains likely to travel to Sochi, Russia, in early May to meet Putin. (RFE/RL, 02.24.16).
    • Russia's major oil company Rosneft has signed an agreement with Venezuela's PDVSA for an additional investment of $500 million in the development of the Orinoco oil belt project. (Interfax, 02.25.16).
    • Wolfgang Büchele, the head of German industry's committee for spurring economic ties with Eastern Europe, said that Russian-German trade sank from 80 billion euros, or about $89 billion, at its peak in 2012 to just over €50 billion last year. (New York Times, 02.24.16).

Russia's neighbors:

  • Ukraine:
    • Despite a year-old cease-fire, fighting between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists in the east of the country has intensified in recent days. At least five Ukrainian soldiers were killed last week in exchanges of gunfire along the front lines. "We could fight today, but we have to maintain international support," said Lt. Col. Volodymyr Kashlyuk, who had been sent from Ukraine's capital to address the soldiers of the 53rd Brigade in Eastern Ukraine. "We cannot have a direct confrontation." (Wall Street Journal, 02.24.16).
    • Bellingcat, which investigating the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, has published a report it provided to Dutch prosecutors linking the commanders of a Russian military unit to the plane’s downing. Russia has strenuously denied the fighters it supports in eastern Ukraine were responsible or that it supplied the missile system. (RFE/RL, 02.24.16).
    • German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said that infighting among political parties in Ukraine's governing coalition cannot be allowed to prevent the government from carrying out its reform obligations under the Minsk accords. Speaking at a joint press conference on February 23 with the Ukrainian and French foreign ministers after talks in Kyiv, Steinmeier said the key steps on implementing the Minsk agreement still must be taken. He said Russia also must be ready to implement the Minsk deal (RFE/RL, 02.23.16).
    • The $3 billion lawsuit Russia filed against Ukraine in London last week over a bond default is just a fraction of the $63 billion Ukraine is seeking in lawsuits and other legal claims over Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea. Russian gas exporter Gazprom PJSC, meanwhile, is demanding about $32 billion in unpaid bills, pushing total claims from both sides to almost $100 billion. (Bloomberg, 02.23.16).
    • Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has accepted a Russian proposal to lift mutual bans on cargo truck transits the two countries imposed earlier this month. But Ukraine's nationalist Svoboda party announced on February 26 that it will again block Russian trucks from transiting through Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 02.26.16, RFE/RL, 02.25.16).
    • Ukraine has signed a $100 million deal with U.S. agriculture giant Cargill to build a major grain-export terminal that Washington's ambassador said could help turn the embattled country into an agricultural "superpower." (RFE/RL, 02.25.16).
  • Other neighbors:
    • Speaking Minsk on February 25 Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Union State of Russia and Belarus is continuing to develop and is setting the tone for relations between all countries that once were part of the Soviet Union. (RFE/RL, 02.25.16).
    • Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev and Iranian counterpart Hassan Rohani have met in Tehran to discuss bilateral ties. Officials of the two neighboring countries on February 23 signed 11 documents on cooperation in transportation, cross-border transfers of electricity, health and medical sciences, customs regulations, and the trade of oil and natural gas. (RFE/RL, 02.23.16).
    • Kazakhstan plans to resume direct passenger flights to Egypt in March. (RFE/RL, 02.24.16).
    • U.S. President Barack Obama has closed a legal loophole that had allowed the import of goods produced by forced or child labor, with potential consequences for cotton exports from Central Asian markets. (RFE/RL, 02.25.16).
    • The European Commission appears ready to offer visa-free travel to Georgia, but could postpone a similar offer to Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 02.26.16).

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