Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Press Release

Russia in Review

Published:

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for January 15-22, 2016

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

Nuclear security:

  • No significant developments.

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

  • The International Atomic Energy Agency verified on Saturday that Iran has shipped over 8.5 tons of enriched uranium to Russia so Iran can’t use that in bomb-making, disabled more than 12,000 centrifuges and poured concrete into the core of a reactor at Arak designed to produce plutonium. The lifting of sanctions against Tehran will reduce the influence of the West on the bilateral relations between Russia and Iran, the Iranian ambassador to Russia said Monday. (New York Times, 01.19.16, Sputnik, 01.18.16).

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

  • Russia will form four new divisions of ground forces in 2016 in response to "intensified" NATO military exercises, General Oleg Salyukov said. One of the divisions will be stationed with the central group of forces, while three will be with Russia's western group of military forces. All of them will be assembled on the basis of existing brigades. (RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
  • “With a country like Russia, that respects mostly force strength, power, we need to adjust our approach. it needs to be a combination of deterrence and will to communicate," Czech Army Gen. Petr Pavel, the chairman of NATO's military committee, said. But Gen. Pavel also said Russia hadn't shown “a practical willingness to get in touch," rebuffing NATO's attempts to set up a military-to-military dialogue. “We want to discuss with the Russians risk reduction, transparency measures so we avoid any miscalculation or incidents," Gen. Pavel said. “We want Russia to know clearly where our red lines are." NATO's red lines, he said, include the sovereignty of allies' borders and the right of collective defense.  (Wall Street Journal, 01.22.16).
  • Polish President Andrzej Duda has called on NATO to deploy "substantial" numbers of troops and equipment in Eastern Europe to safeguard Poland and the region from a more aggressive Russia. (RFE/RL, 01.19.16).

Missile defense:

  • No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

  • No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

  • "The most important issue we spoke of is coordination, primarily in anti-terrorist actions. The American side has made several proposals, including with due account of the telephone conversations between President Putin and President Obama, my contacts with John Kerry and the contacts between the [Russian] Defense Ministry and the Pentagon," the Russian Foreign Minister said after the talks with the U.S. state secretary in Zurich. "These proposals [put forward by the U.S.] are made in the right direction in principle," Lavrov said. (Interfax, 01.21.16).
  • A bill that seeks to include Russia on the list of “highly dangerous countries,” from where terrorists could try to enter the United States, was introduced in Congress. The document suggests checking American visa applications from countries on this list for a minimum of 30 days and to enhance controls over refugees from these countries.  (Izvestia, 01.19.16).
  • A suicide bomber with a vehicle full of explosives has carried out an attack close to the Russian Embassy in Kabul, with initial Afghan media reports saying that five people were killed. The embassy said no Russian employees at the diplomatic compound were hurt by the blast, which sent a plume of smoke rising over Kabul. (RFE/RL, 01.20.16).
  • A U.S. judge rejected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's bid for a new trial and ordered him to pay victims of the deadly attack more than $101 million in restitution. (RFE/RL, 01.16.16).
  • Seventy percent of Russians think it is too dangerous to travel overseas in the aftermath of terror attacks in Paris and the Middle East, a poll published Wednesday showed. (Moscow Times, 01.20.16).
  • Stalbek Rakhmanov of the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said on January 15 that 508 Kyrgyz citizens had joined various Islamist militant groups in Syria and Iraq in 2015, including 387 men, 121 women, and 83 people younger than 18. According to Rakhmanov, 40 Kyrgyz citizens returned from Syria and Iraq last year, while 33 were killed in clashes. In a separate development, a Kyrgyz police officer has been arrested on charges of selling weapons to terrorists (RFE/RL, 01.15.16, RFE/RL, 01.21.16).

Cyber security:

  • No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

  • No significant developments.

Bilateral economic ties:

  • Russian investments into American treasury bonds have decreased by $20 billion over the last year. In November 2015 Russia held $88 billion in American bonds, while in November 2014 the amount was $108.1 billion. (RBC, 01.21.16).

Other bilateral issues:

  • The United States said on Friday it had revoked the credentials of five of six honorary Russian consuls to retaliate for what it said was Russia's harassment of U.S. diplomats, prompting an angry response from Moscow. (Reuters, 01.22.16).
  • Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said her relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia is "interesting. “He’s somebody you must stand up to," Clinton said. "Like many bullies, he'll take as much as he can." Clinton did not rule out the possibility of a new reset strategy when asked “As president, would you hand Vladimir Putin a reset button? ”Well, it would depend upon what I got for it,” Clinton said, listing what she saw as the positive consequences of her 2009 strategy. (Free Beacon, 01.17.16, Boston Globe, 01.18.16).
  • Russia is second only to its former Cold War foe the United States in terms of its power to influence the global agenda but lags behind many other countries in most categories, a new ranking carried out by U.S. News & World Report, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and global brand consultants BAV Consulting and presented at the Davos World Economic Forum said. (The Moscow Times, 01.21.16).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

  • The ruble jumped the most since August, rebounding from its lowest level on record, as a recovery in crude prices encouraged investors to buy assets in the world’s biggest energy exporter. Russia’s currency jumped 3.3 percent to 79.94  per dollar on Friday in Moscow from its historic low of 85 a day earlier,  as Brent crude advanced 5.6 percent, the most since September. The RTS stock index surged 5.2 percent, the most since October, while five-year government bonds climbed for the first time in three days. Russia’s central bank governor has earlier said she did not intend to intervene to support the ruble. (Bloomberg, 01.22.16, RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
  • IMF now expects Russia’s economy to shrink 1 percent this year, compared with an expected contraction of 0.6 percent. (Bloomberg, 01.19.16).
  • Russia saw a net capital outflow of $58.9 billion last year, almost three times less than in 2014, data published by the Central Bank showed. (Moscow Times, 01.18.16).
  • According to Russian Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov there’s a possibility that the country’s largest state banks – Sberbank and VTB – could be privatized, but it’s necessary to start the process with the sale of the state stake in the Rosneft petroleum company. (RBC, 01.19.16).
  • About 60 well-known brands and companies left Russia over the past two years. In the past year, more than 20 Western corporations, including Opel, Adobe Systems and Stockmann, have terminated their Russian businesses; around 30 production facilities owned by foreigners have been closed. The number of companies with German capital, and also their branches and representations in Russia, decreased by 7 percent in 2015 to 5,583.  (Kommersant, 01.21.16, Washington Post, 01.18.16, Interfax, 01.22.16).
  • The market for previously-occupied housing in Moscow has dropped by almost 30 percent over the past year. (Moscow Times, 01.19.16).
  • Aleksei L. Kudrin, a former finance minister, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Russia should brace for oil bottoming out at $16 to $18 a barrel for a short period this year. (New York Times, 01.22.16).
  • Chief of Russia's top bank Sberbank German Gref said that Russia had "lost the competition" by its overreliance on oil exports. "We are among the loser countries, the downshifter countries," he said at an economic conference in Moscow, lamenting Russia's failure to invest in other technologies to stay ahead of the curve. (RFE/RL, 01.16.16).
  • According to a survey last week by state-run pollster VTsIOM, 43% of Russian households had no savings. (Wall Street Journal, 01.19.16).
  • Russia was included on the list of the top 15 most innovative economies in the world by Bloomberg. (RBTH, 01.20.16).
  • Russians consume about 9 percent less alcohol than they did in 2009, Russia's consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said. (Moscow Times, 01.19.16).
  • The number of HIV-positive patients registered in Russia has reached one million. (Moscow Times, 01.20.16).
  • President Vladimir Putin on Thursday blamed Vladimir Lenin for planting the ideas that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. “There were many such ideas as providing regions with autonomy, and so on. They planted an atomic bomb under the building that is called Russia which later exploded. We did not need a global revolution,” he said. (The Moscow Times, 01.21.16).
  • A senior ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is again calling for a harsh crackdown on the Kremlin's opponents. Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Russian region of Chechnya, suggested that Putin's opponents should be sent to "a good psychiatric hospital.”  Chechens staged a rally on Friday in the Russian city of Grozny  in a show of support for Kadyrov. (Washington Post, RFE/RL, 01.20.16,Wall Street Journal, 01.22.16).
  • The governor of Russia's Far East Jewish Autonomous Region says the area is "ready" to house Jews from Europe who are facing anti-Semitism. Russian President Vladimir Putin has earlier called on Jews to return to Russia.(RFE/RL, 01.20.16).
  • A new survey by the independent Levada Center pollster has found that their work might be of limited use — more than a quarter of the Russians questioned said they were reluctant to express their views in opinion polls. (The Moscow Times, 01.22.16).
  • Using the number of published scientific articles as an indicator of success, chief of Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Fortov said that over the past 15 years Russia's output of scientific articles increased by 12 percent — compared to a tenfold increase in China and tripling in India. “China overtook us in 1997, India in 2005 and Brazil in 2007. Iran is breathing down our neck,” he said. A recent academic paper published in Moscow some light on where most of the mathematicians with Russian last names went; unsurprisingly, more than a third of those who moved West in 1993-2015 went to the U.S., with France a distant second.  (The Moscow Times, 01.21.16, Bloomberg, 01.21.16).
  • Net emigration from Russia rose from 35,000 people a year from 2008 to 2010 to more than 400,000, by preliminary estimates, in 2015. (Washington Post, 01.18.16).

Defense and Aerospace:

  • Russia will conduct seven joint military exercises with foreign countries in 2016, including the first-ever joint exercise with Pakistan and one with Vietnam. (RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
  • The process of chemical weapons destruction resumed in Russia in mid-January, Colonel-General Valery Kapashin said. Kapashin said a total of 36,770 tons of chemical weapons, which is over 92 percent of all chemical weapons resources, was destroyed in Russia as of early 2016. (Interfax, 01.18.16).
  • The European Commission funded Russian scientists to develop plans to save the world from rogue asteroids by blowing them up with nuclear weapons.  (Telegraph, 01.17.16).
  • The vast majority of Russians (70 percent) believe that military conflicts are a greater threat than the economic crisis according to a recent poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center. (Gazeta.ru, 01.19.16).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

  • A high-profile British inquiry into the poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer turned critic of the Kremlin, concluded that his murder “was probably approved” by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the head of the country’s  security service. Judge Robert Owen on Thursday listed various possible motivations for why the Russians wanted to kill Mr. Litvinenko, including a belief among Russian security officials that he had betrayed the F.S.B. and had begun to work for British intelligence after he fled in 2000. “We regret that the strictly criminal case has been politicized and has darkened the general atmosphere of bilateral relations,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the British inquiry a “quasi-investigation” and said it may “poison” bilateral relations between Russia and the U.K. (New York Times, The Moscow Times, 01.22.16).
  • Head of Russia's Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has announced that last year's murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has been solved. Vadim Prokhorov, the Nemtsov family's lawyer, has repeatedly said that he does not consider the case solved. A daughter of the slain politician has also  rejected conclusions by the chief of Russia's Investigative Committee about her father's shooting death. (Moscow Times, RFE/RL, 01.21.16).
  • A court in southern Russia has sentenced former air traffic controller Pyotr Parpulov to 12 years in jail for treason. (RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
  • Russian soldier Valery Permyakov charged with killing an Armenian family of seven has pleaded guilty.(RFE/RL, 01.22.16).

Foreign affairs and trade:

  • Syria:
    • Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov denied that Vladimir Putin reportedly made an offer to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign. The Financial Times, citing sources in Western intelligence, wrote on Friday about a secret mission made by Gen. Igor Sergun, then-chief of Russia’s military intelligence, to Syria. The Financial Times wrote that Sergun traveled to Damascus to persuade the Syrian president to resign voluntarily, but Assad “angrily rejected” Moscow’s offer. (RBC, 01.22.16).
    • Diplomats have been working nonstop this week to set the groundwork for Syrian peace talks that were scheduled to, but will not, begin on Monday in Geneva. On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, met in Zurich to discuss the matter, but the meeting broke up inconclusively. On Thursday, Mr. Kerry said that the talks would take place soon, delayed by a day or two, but that the rivals would not sit in the same room. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, said that a Jan. 25 deadline for talks to begin was likely to be missed. Mistura also wrote that Riyadh is complicating his efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict by trying to tightly control which opposition groups will be allowed to participate in the negotiations (Bloomberg, 01.20.16, New York Times, 01.22.16, Foreign Policy, 01.20.16).
    • Russia and the Syrian government have objected to a U.S.-backed list of opposition delegates drawn up in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh last month that includes representatives of some of the main rebel groups, saying that they won't negotiate with people they term "terrorists." Russia is pushing instead for the inclusion of a group of government-approved opposition figures who have remained loyal to Assad and also of Syria's Kurds, who are fighting a somewhat different war on their own behalf in northeastern Syria. (Washington Post, 01.20.16).
    • Witnesses in Syria and American officials confirmed that the Russian military had taken up positions at an air base near the northeastern city of Qamishli in Syria. A Syrian activist network called the Local Coordination Committees has reported in recent days that 100 Russian military personnel have been deployed at the city’s airport, and that Russian officials met with both government officials and Kurdish militia leaders to discuss deploying forces in the city. (New York Times, 01.23.16).
    • Russia's military intervention in Syria is finally generating gains on the ground for Syrian government forces. Syrian troops have advanced on several key fronts. After driving the rebels out of a string of villages near the Turkish border in northern Latakia province, last week they recaptured the town of Salma. Syrian troops have been making advances in and around the key city of Aleppo and have begun to pressure the rebels in some of their strongholds in southern Syria. (Washington Post, 01.20.16).
    • Because of the Russian airstrikes, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. said, Bashar Assad has ''regained some small amounts of ground'' and has managed to consolidate control in some areas where his forces had previously been under siege from opposition groups, including some backed by the United States. (New York Times, 01.26.16).
    • Russian airstrikes hit Islamic State militants Tuesday in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, in the village where the extremist group had been accused of massacring as many as hundreds of people over the weekend, the Russian military said. (New York Times, 01.20.16).
    • Frants Klintsevich, deputy head of the defense committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said the success of the Russian air campaign in Syria shows it’s “realistic” for government forces to regain full control of Syria. “It’s important we keep up the momentum,” Klintsevich said by phone. (Bloomberg, 01.20.16).
    • The U.S., British, and French defense ministers have criticized Russia's role in the Syria conflict and called on Moscow to stop targeting the opposition forces who are fighting the Islamic State militant group. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on January 20 that the Russians "are on the wrong track strategically and also in some cases tactically." (RFE/RL, 01.21.16).
    • A senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said there was no current military collaboration with Russia in Syria. That, he said, was a subject for diplomats. (New York Times, 01.23.16).
    • Russian President Vladimir Putin and visiting Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani agreed to intensify the efforts to seek a settlement of the Syria conflict. (Interfax, 01.18.16).
    • Over 40 metric tons of humanitarian aid, including dry rations, have been delivered to areas in Syria surrounded by militants, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday. (Sputnik, 01.19.16).
  • Other countries:
    • Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pressing for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be brought in from the cold, saying Russian help is crucial to tackling multiple crises in the Middle East. Mr Abe said he was willing to go to Moscow as this year’s chair of the Group of Seven advanced economies, or to invite the Russian president to Tokyo. Also Japan’s foreign minister pledged on January 19 to continue talks with Russia, saying that Moscow is key to resolving international threats from Syria and North Korea. (Financial Times, 01.17.16, FE/RL, 01.19.16).
    • Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will head the Russian delegation to the Munich Security Conference in February. (Sputnik, 01.21.16).
    • Russia has submitted a 'resolute protest' to Warsaw after the Monument of Gratitude to the Red Army, located in one of the central squares of Poland's Szczecin, was desecrated. (Interfax, 01.17.16).
    • Russia will continue to boycott the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in retaliation for sanctions imposed on it over its role in the Ukraine conflict. (Moscow Times, 01.18.16).
    • China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force will start receiving its first Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker-E  fighters from Russia later this year. (National Interest, 01.20.16).

Russia's neighbors:

  • Ukraine:
    • The U.S. may be able to consider lifting sanctions it imposed on Russia over its involvement in violence in Ukraine later this year if the Kremlin complies with the Minsk peace deal, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said. Earlier  U.S. State Department's Coordinator for Sanctions Policy Daniel Fried has stated that in case of settlement of the conflict in Donbas the United States could remove common sanctions against Russia, but will retain sanctions with respect to Crimea. Fried said this could happen in 2016. (Interfax, 01.18.16, Bloomberg, 01.22.16).
    • Negotiations between Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in Kaliningrad last week could mark the beginning of preparations for a bilateral summit dealing with Ukraine, Mikhail Gorbachev said. "It was a kind of brainstorm session in search of compromises for the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements," Surkov told reporters. (RFE/RL, 01.15.16, Interfax, 01.20.16).
    • Ukraine's state antimonopoly agency has imposed a $3.5 billion fine on Russia's Gazprom for allegedly abusing its monopoly control of Ukraine's natural-gas transit system. Earlier this week, Gazprom informed Ukraine it owes $2.55 billion for gas supplied in the third quarter of 2015 and that Kyiv has 10 days to pay.(RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
    • Kiev has added 70 new items to its list of banned Russian goods. Certain vegetables, as well as sauces, ketchup and baked goods have been added to the list. Also, a Ukrainian government order to cut off trade with the Russian-annexed Ukrainian region of Crimea has come into effect. (Moscow Times, 01.20.16, RFE/RL, 01.18.16).
    • Ukrainian President Petro  Poroshenko's administration distributed a statement saying that Kyiv expects to receive a tranche of $7 billion from the International Monetary Fund. (RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
    • Washington has conditioned granting $1 billion to Kiev in loan guarantees on firing of Ukraine’s prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, Zn.ua reported on January 21, citing the outcome of a recent visit by Ukrainian law-enforcement and anti-corruption officials to the United States. (Belfer Center, 02.22.16).
    • More than 200 Russians have fled to Ukraine since the beginning of 2014. Only a handful have been granted political asylum or other forms of protection by Ukrainian authorities.(RFE/RL, 01.20.16).
    • Former Russia-backed separatist commander Igor Girkin said separatist "authorities" in Donbass had installed a military court and introduced 1941 military laws implemented by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. "Under this legislation we tried people and executed the convicted," Girkin said.(RFE/RL, 01.19.16).
    • Ukrainian computer hacker Sergei Vovnenko accused of trying to frame a prominent cybersecurity expert has pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to using more than 13,000 computers to steal log-in and credit-card data. (RFE/RL, 01.21.16).
  • Other neighbors:
    • On January 18, the Kazakh tenge fell to 372.58 against the U.S. dollar at the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange. In January 2015, the exchange rate in Kazakhstan for one U.S. dollar was 183 tenges. (RFE/RL, 01.18.16).
    • Azerbaijan’s parliament has approved a package of measures aimed at coping with an economic and financial crisis caused by plunging energy prices. The crisis plan includes a 20 percent fee on foreign exchange taken out of the country for investment abroad. (RFE/RL, 01.19.16).
    • Kyrgyzstan's parliament on January 20 voted to terminate deals with Russia on the construction and operation of two power plants in the country -- the Upper Naryn Hydropower Plant Cascade and the Kambar-Ata-1 Hydropower Plant. (RFE/RL, 01.20.16).
    • An Uzbek delegation led by the authoritarian Central Asia nation's foreign minister met with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Desai Biswal in Washington on January 19 for consultations on a range of issues, including human rights and security. (RFE/RL, 01.19.16).
    • Lawmakers in Tajikistan have adopted amendments to the country's constitution that could enable President Emomali Rahmon to establish a presidential dynasty. Under the amendments adopted on January 22, Rahmon would be able to run for reelection an indefinite number of times. In addition, the amendments lower the required age for presidents from 35 years to 30. That change enables Rahmon's eldest son, Rustam Emomali, to take part in the presidential election scheduled for 2020, when he will be 33. (RFE/RL, 01.22.16).
    • Protests continued for a third-straight day in the Moldovan capital on January 22, with thousands demanding early elections and the resignation of the country's newly appointed, pro-European government. (RFE/RL, 01.22.16).

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