Russia in Review

Russia in Review: a digest of useful news from U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism for November 20-25, 2015

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

Nuclear security:

• No significant developments.

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

• Russian companies can again supply products, services and funds to support Iran's civilian uranium enrichment program following President Vladimir Putin's signing of a decree. Russia's move follows the adoption last month of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and outlines three areas where the country can resume its support for Iran's civilian nuclear industry: modifying two cascades at the Fordow uranium enrichment plant, supporting Iran's export of surplus enriched uranium – above the 300 kilogram limit - in exchange for Russian raw uranium supplies, and upgrading the Arak heavy water reactor. (WNN, 11.24.15).
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his first visit to Iran in nearly a decade. Mr. Putin met for more than 90 minutes Monday with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Both men criticized the U.S. and other Western nations for insisting that any political settlement in Syria should exclude Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Khamenei said that, apart from the nuclear talks, Iran wouldn't hold bilateral negotiations with the U.S. regarding Syria or any other issue. Mr. Putin went to Tehran for a gathering of the Gas-Exporting Countries Forum. During the visit, Putin confirmed Moscow's readiness to provide a $5 billion loan for the implementation of priority projects in Iran. Moscow also expects to begin supplying advanced S-300 antiaircraft missile systems to Iran before the end of this year, a top Russian official has said (Wall Street Journal, 11.23.15, Interfax, 11.24.15, RFE/RL, 11.25.15).

NATO-Russia relations:

• The British Royal Air Force has launched a search operation amid reports of a Russian submarine being spotted off the coast of Scotland. Canadian and French patrol aircraft are also understood to be involved, along with a British frigate and submarine, the BBC report went on to say. The French plane has been searching for the submarine for at least 10 days.  Britain will boost its defense-equipment budget by 7% to £178 billion ($270 billion) for the next 10 years (Moscow Times, 11.23.15, Wall Street Journal, 11.23.15).
• The U.S. government has decided to modify an earlier measure against Rosoboronexport. The measure shall not apply to subcontracts at made on behalf of the U.S. government for goods, technology, and services for the maintenance, repair, overhaul, or sustainment of Mi-17 helicopters for the purpose of providing assistance to the security forces of Afghanistan. (Federal Register, 11.25.15).
• Some 19 percent of respondents of a recent poll in Russia said battles against NATO were possible on the Russian territory. An even higher number, 28 percent, think that battles between Russian and NATO forces could occur outside of Russia's borders during the next decade, a survey released on Saturday by the independent Levada Center pollster indicated. “Major clashes” taking place overseas between the Russian army and Islamic State were viewed as a possible development by 59 percent of respondents, the poll indicated. (Moscow Times, 11.23.15).
• Also see the section on Syria.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

• No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

• The Security Council unanimously passed a counterterrorism resolution on Friday that authorizes the use of military force against the extremist groups Islamic State and Nusra Front. The resolution, introduced by France in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris a week ago, calls on the international community to mobilize and to organize efforts against the global threat posed by terrorism, to block the flow of foreign fighters and to crack down on terrorist finances. (Wall Street Journal, 11.21.15).
• U.S. President Barack Obama raised doubts about the prospect of forming an expanded alliance of world powers to battle Islamic State, saying Sunday that he doesn't know whether Russia will shift its focus to combat extremists. “The question at this point is whether they can make a strategic adjustment that allows them to be effective partners with us," the president said. “We don't know that yet." Putin "needs to go after the people who killed Russia's citizens," Obama said. (Wall Street Journal, RFE/RL, 11.22.15).
• The recent attacks in Paris and Beirut and the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt were the first results of a centrally planned terrorism campaign by a wing of the Islamic State leadership that oversees ''external'' targets, according to American and European intelligence officials. (New York Times, 11.23.15).
• Russia has received the most threats from the Islamic State in its videos, with more than 25 in two years. France is next with almost 20 in the same time frame, according to Javier Lesaca, a visiting scholar at George Washington University's school of media and public affairs. (New York Times, 11.23.15).
• Russian officials say 11 fighters linked to the extremist Islamic State (IS) group have been killed in a special operation in the volatile North Caucasus region. The Counterterrorism Committee said the fighters opened fire on law enforcement officers and threw grenades after they were cornered in a wooded area outside Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria region. (RFE/RL, 11.22.15).
• An Austrian court has sentenced a man from Russia's Chechnya region for fighting alongside Islamic State fighters in Syria. A district court in the northeastern city of St. Poelten sentenced the 24-year-old Chechen man, whose name was not disclosed, to five years in jail on November 20. (RFE/RL, 11.20.15).
• Former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called for including Russia in a consolidated global battle against Islamic State, and suggested putting aside the inevitable disputes between Washington and Moscow for the sake of the fight against terrorism. Hagel dismissed the disagreements between the West and Russia about Syria's President Bashar Assad as secondary, and said operations in Syria should be focused on defeating Islamic State.  (Moscow Times, 11.23.15).
• The presidents of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have said their countries will not participate in any antiterrorism coalition if it includes neighboring Russia. The three leaders made the announcement on November 20 after a meeting in the Lithuanian town of Palanga. (RFE/RL, 11.21.15).
• Georgia has launched an investigation into an Islamic State video purportedly showing Georgian-speaking men fighting alongside IS militants in Syria. Also Georgian intelligence officials have arrested 29-year-old David Borchashvhili on terrorism charges. Borchashvhili arrived in Georgia early on November 21 but officials deported him back to Turkey hours later. The same day, Turkish police sent him back to Georgia, where he was arrested. (RFE/RL, 11.21.15, RFE/RL, 11.24.15).

Cyber security:

• On Nov. 18, Telegram reportedly banned 78 ISIS-related channels, "disturbed" to learn how popular the app had become among extremists. Those extremists had used the app both to spread propaganda, according to an October report, and to crowdfund money for guns and rockets, according to Vocativ. In media interviews and on his Web site, the app's founder — Pavel Durov, often called the "Zuckerberg of Russia" — has boasted that Telegram is technologically and ideologically unsurveillable.  (Washington Post, 11.23.15).
• The UK's Trident nuclear weapons system could be rendered obsolete by cyber attacks, former Defense Secretary Lord Browne has warned. (BBC, 11.24.15).

Energy exports from CIS:

• Vladimir Putin congratulated Gas Exporting Countries Forum leaders in Teheran on "successfully holding this major international event" and added that Russia intends to increase the volume of its gas production by 40% by 2035. (WNN, 11.24.15).

Bilateral economic ties:

• No significant developments.

Other bilateral issues:

• Former U.S. National Security Agency employee Ronald Pelton convicted in 1986 of spying for the Soviet Union is set to be freed after three decades in federal custody. (RFE/RL, 11.24.15).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

• “There are tentative signs of economic stabilization in Russia. The economy is expected to contract by 3.8 percent in 2015 followed by a milder contraction of 0.6 percent in 2016 due to the headwinds from lower oil prices. The current account adjustment is progressing rapidly, supporting the ongoing external deleveraging process. Inflation is projected to decline to 12.7 percent at end-2015, and, in the absence of shocks to international oil prices, to continue to fall further during 2016.” (IMF, 11.23.15).
• Russia's finance minister said on Tuesday that higher taxes look inevitable in the next two or three years if Moscow fails to cut its budget spending. (Wall Street Journal, 11.24.15).
• In the January-September period Russia's dollar-denominated exports were down by a total of 31.5%. The decline was paced by a 42.7% drop in the dollar value of oil exports. Over the same January-September time frame domestic oil production had actually increased by 1.4% and the physical volume of oil exports grew by more than 8%. (Forbes, 11.23.15).
• Russian corporate bonds are the best performing in the emerging markets in 2015, Citigroup notes, with a total return year-to-date of 24%. (Wall Street Journal, 11.21.15).
• The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center is opening in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday. More than 30,000 exhibits and 13,000 photos are on display. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will take part in the formal opening ceremony (Tass, 11.25.15).
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law legislation exempting holy books from being branded as extremist. (RFE/RL, 11.24.15).
• One in five graduate theses defended by rectors of Russia’s universities contain extensive plagiarism, according to a report by the Dissernet prominent online group devoted to exposing intellectual fraud by public figures. (Moscow Times, 11.23.15).
• The Justice Ministry report accusing the rights group Memorial of "undermining the constitutional order and calling for the overthrow of the Russian government," following the ministry's inspection of the NGO's activities and dated Oct. 30, has been sent to a magistrates' court in Moscow's Tverskoy district. (Moscow Times, 11.21.15).
• The number of registered HIV-positive patients in Russia has reached almost 1 million. (Moscow Times, 11.23.15).

Defense and Aerospace:

• By March of this year, Russian economist Sergei Guriev estimated that Russia had already spent half its 2015 military budget. (Wall Street Journal, 11.25.15).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

• No significant developments.

Foreign affairs and trade:

• The Syrian conflict:
  • Turkish fighter jets on patrol near the Syrian border on Tuesday shot down a Russian warplane. Turkey said it hit the plane after it violated Turkey's airspace and ignored 10 warnings. Russian defense officials say that the jet was flying at 6,000 feet in Syrian territory when it was. A U.S. official said that a calculation shows the Russian jet was in Turkish airspace for 30 seconds or less. The Russian military said the two pilots had ejected. Video footage emerged soon thereafter showing one bloody pilot on the ground surrounded by Syrian rebels exulting at his death. The navigator of the Russian Su-24 insisted that his plane did not cross into Turkey’s airspace, and says he was given no visual or radio warning before being fired at. Konstantin Murakhtin was extracted in a 12-hour joint operation by Russian and Syrian special forces. During the search-and-rescue mission, a Russian Mi-8 helicopter was blown up and a Russian marine was killed. This incident marked the first confirmed deaths of Russian soldiers in combat in Syria. (New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, Russia Today, 11.25.15).
  • Russian forces launched a heavy bombardment against insurgent-held areas in Syria's Latakia province on Wednesday, near where a Russian warplane had been shot down by Turkey the day before, rebels and a monitoring group said. The incident with the plane occurred   in an area that hosts not only Western-backed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army, but also Islamists with links to al Qaeda. Islamic State, the most radical group fighting the Assad regime, hasn't operated in the area for almost two years. (Wall Street Journal, 11.24.15, Reuters, 11.25.15).
  • Speaking in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi before a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, Russian President Vladimir Putin tore into Turkey over the downing, saying the jet fighter was carrying out strikes on Islamic State militants, including natives of Russia, and posed no threat to Turkey. The downing was “a stab in the back, carried out by accomplices of terrorists," he said. The probability of new incidents is high, and Russia will have to react if such incidents occur, Putin said. Putin also said he found it suspicious that Turkey had reached out to its NATO allies after the episode but not to Moscow.  (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Moscow Times, CNBC, 11.25.15).
  • Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan underlined that the nationality of the jet wasn't known until Russian authorities announced it was theirs, and reiterated that the Turkey's military had warned the warplane repeatedly before Turkish F-16s fired on it inside Turkey. (Wall Street Journal 11.25.15).
  • In Washington, President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for de-escalation, but added that Turkey had the right to defend its airspace. After an emergency NATO meeting Tuesday, the alliance's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said intelligence reports confirmed Turkey's version of events and rejected Russia's claim that its aircraft was flying over Syria and had not crossed into Turkish airspace. (Washington Post, 11.25.15).
  • Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev slammed Turkey for “reckless, criminal actions" and warned of consequences. The first casualty of the shootdown, Mr. Medvedev said, would be a deterioration of ties between Russia and NATO. (New York Times, 11.25.15).
  • Moscow's top diplomat called the downing of the Su-24 plane a "planned provocation" that has dealt a major blow to already fragile relations with NATO. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also tamped down speculation of a military response by Russia after the jet broke apart in flames along the Turkish-Syrian border. "We're not going to war against Turkey," he said after talks with his Turkish counterpart. Lavrov canceled a visit with his Turkish counterpart, but the two had an hour-long phone conversation in which they agreed to share details about the shootdown through diplomatic and military channels. (Washington Post, 11.25.15, Wall Street Journal, 11.25.15).
  • Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu outlined plans to ramp-up security at Russia's Hmeimim base in Syria with an S-400 missile system, one of Russia's most powerful air-defense weapons. He also announced the arrival of a missile cruiser to bolster Moscow's air campaign in support of Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow has also suspended military ties with Ankara. (Wall Street Journal, Aviation Week, 11.25.15).
  • Russia's ambassador to France, Alexandre Orlov, told the Europe 1 radio station Wednesday that despite Turkey's attack on a Russian jet, Moscow was still keen on forging a broad alliance. “We are prepared to plan strikes against Islamic State positions together, and form a joint command with France, the U.S., and any country that wants to join," including Turkey, he said. (Wall Street Journal, 11.25.15).
  • A poll conducted by Interfax shows that all leading Russian tour operators have suspended the sale of tours to Turkey at the recommendations of the Foreign Ministry and the Federal Agency for Tourism. (Interfax, 11.25.15).
  • Russia's Federal Veterinary and Phyto-Sanitary Oversight Service (Rosselkhoznadzor) is banning imports of poultry meat from a Turkish supplier effective December 1. (Interfax, 11.25.15).
  • Lawmakers from both upper and lower chambers of Russian parliament — the Federation Council and the State Duma — have suggested canceling air communication with Turkey in the wake of the Turkish military downing a Russian Su-24 military air plane on Tuesday. (Moscow Times, 11.24.15).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Russian military would continue to use the Caspian Sea to launch attacks against Islamic State “for as long as necessary,” despite the concerns of former Soviet republics in the region, the Kremlin press office reported Monday. (Moscow Times, 11.24.15).
  • Moscow said on November 23 that its warplanes had hit almost 500 targets in war-torn Syria in the past two days, including tanker trucks and oil infrastructure in territory controlled by the Islamic State group. The Russian military said that the latest strikes had destroyed 80 tanker trucks near the Islamic State stronghold of Raqa, as well as a large oil-storage tank and an oil refinery south of the city. Russia has carried out more than 4,000 airstrikes since the beginning of its intervention in Syria, using a force of modern and modified Soviet-era aircraft.  (Washington Post, 11.25.15, RBTH, 11.23.15).
  • For the first time during combat operations in Syria, Russia has used two types of air-launched cruise missile; the Kh-101 long-range low-observable cruise missile and the Kh-555 (AS-22). Both weapons are designed and manufactured by Raduga, the Dubna-based firm. (IISS, 11.24.15).
  • The Russian Defense Ministry says three Russian journalists have been injured while traveling to frontline positions in Syria. (RFE/RL, 11.24.15).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has told his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad to either leave office and make room for a transitional government or be forced out, Israeli officials say. Putin delivered his ultimatum at a meeting between the two in Moscow on October 20.The Russians would agree to his participation but only if Assad first resigns as president during the period of the transitional government. (Times of Israel, 11.16.15).
  • Ahead of Francois Hollande’s Thursday visit to Moscow Russia said that it has already established greater military co-ordination with the French. “In the naval field, they are working with a group of Russian naval vessels in the Mediterranean,” said Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU. “We are also exchanging intelligence on the ground and information on potential targets.” However, French officials said that Paris was as wary as the US about sharing intelligence on air strikes with the Russians.  (Financial Times, 11.24.15).
  • Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the only Republican presidential candidate to outright oppose a no-fly zone, arguing it would create the potential for a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. (Wall Street Journal, 11.24.15).
• Other countries:
  • Western leaders who met on the margins of last week's Group of 20 summit in Turkey agreed to extend sanctions imposed on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine by six months until July of next year, a senior European diplomat said. The decision was taken despite mounting calls to cooperate more closely with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the fight against Islamic State following the militant group's Nov. 13 attacks in Paris which killed 130 people. (Reuters, 11.23.15).
  • The United States will not lift sanctions imposed on Russia in exchange for an expansion of its counter-terrorism operation in Syria, White House spokesman Josh Earnest announced at a press conference Monday. (Moscow Times, 11.24.15).

Russia's neighbors:

• Ukraine:
  • Russia and Ukraine escalated economic and political feuding on Wednesday. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk ordered a ban on all Russian-owned airlines transiting Ukrainian airspace. Mr. Yatsenyuk also ordered Naftogaz to immediately halt gas imports from Russia. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of “silent consent" to disruption of supply of electricity to Crimea. He ordered officials to ensure that the peninsula had temporary energy supplies before construction of part of an undersea cable from mainland Russia is completed on Dec. 20. Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said Moscow might also suspend coal shipments to Ukraine in retaliation for a power blackout of Crimea.  Ukraine has earlier suspended cargo traffic to Crimea as protesters blocked authorities’ efforts to restore power to the peninsula after explosions plunged almost two million people into darkness on Sunday. (Bloomberg, 11.23.15, Wall Street Journal, RFE/RL, 11.25.15).
  • Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says the parliaments of all European Union member states have completed the process of ratifying the bloc's Association Agreement with Ukraine. (RFE/RL, 11.20.15).
  • People across Ukraine marked the Day of Dignity and Freedom on Nov.11, a holiday commemorating the 2013 beginning of the Euromaidan protests that ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych. (RFE/RL, 11.21.15).
  • A group of ethnic Poles from Ukraine's conflict-torn eastern region of Donetsk has arrived in Poland. (RFE/RL, 11.24.15).

Other neighbors:

• Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has met with Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbaev to discuss economic and security ties during his first official visit to Kazakhstan. (RFE/RL, 11.20.15).
• Some 2,000 protesters have rallied in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, against constitutional reforms proposed by the government. The protesters say government leaders are trying to secure their authority and control over the country by instituting the changes, which would shift power from the president to the prime minister. (RFE/RL, 11.20.15).

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