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Press Release

Russia in Review

Published: July 22, 2016

Abstract

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

 

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

Nuclear security:

  • “The worst-case scenario is losing an American city to terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Instead of losing 3,000 people in one morning, we could lose more than 300,000. Instead of losing two great buildings, we could lose block after block after block to a nuclear event,” former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich said. (Huffington Post, 07.20.16).
  • "Radiological and nuclear terrorism remains a threat to our nation's security,” said U.S. Congressman Bennie G. Thompson. (CONGDP, 07.15.16).
  • “Countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea are now modernizing, expanding, and diversifying their nuclear arsenals. State and non-state actors continue to pursue nuclear and radiological capabilities….This environment requires a credible deterrent appropriate for advanced military competitors, regional WMD states, and non-state terrorist networks,” U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration  administrator Frank Klotz said. (CONGDP, 07.14.16).
  • The attempted coup in Turkey on Friday and the subsequent closure of the Incirlik airbase in the south of the country have raised fresh questions about the wisdom of the US stationing the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons in Europe at such a vulnerable site. (Guardian, 07.17.16).
  • Nearly 300 nuclear security experts will be deployed for the upcoming Olympic Games, Agencia Brasil reported on Wednesday. (Xinhua, 07.20.16).
  • Russia has officially confirmed that it is supplying HEU for the fuel of the FRM-II research reactor, operated by the Technical University Munich, Germany. (IPFM, 07.18.16).

Iran’s nuclear program and related issues:

  • The United States and Russia both criticized United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday for overstepping his mandate in a report on the implementation of a Security Council resolution backing a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. "The United States disagrees strongly with elements of this report, including that its content goes beyond the appropriate scope," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, told the council. Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the report contained factual errors and headings in the report referring to 'restrictions' on Iranian ballistic missile activities "simply don't coincide with the subject of the report." (Reuters, 07.18.16).
  • Iran may sell to Russia some 40 tons of heavy water, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday. (Tass, 07.19.16).
  • Iran has received the first batch of missiles of Russia’s S-300 air defense system, the Iranian news agency Tasnim reported on July 18. (Tass, 07.18.16).

Military issues, including NATO-Russia relations:

  • Asked about Russia’s threatening activities, which have unnerved the small Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing if those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” (New York Times, 07.20.16).
  • U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has assured NATO allies in Eastern Europe that the United States remains "fully committed" to defending them.  The top U.S. diplomat was responding to remarks by Donald Trump.(RFE/RL, 07.22.16).
  • Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's secretary general , said that he ''will not interfere in the U.S. election campaign,'' but made clear that he was alarmed by Donald Trump's remarks. ''Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO,'' he said in a statement.  Asked on Thursday about Mr. Trump's comments, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon of Britain snapped: ''Article 5 is an absolute commitment. It doesn't come with conditions or caveats.'' (New York Times, 07.22.16).
  • When pressed on whether  Donald Trump and the U.S. would come to the aid of countries like Estonia in the case of a Russian invasion, Newt Gingrich, said he too "would think about it a great deal." "Estonia is in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. The Russians aren't gonna necessarily come across the border militarily. The Russians are gonna do what they did in Ukraine," he said. "I'm not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St. Petersburg. I think we have to think about what does this stuff mean." (NBC, 07.21.16).
  • "Mr. Trump is committed to supporting NATO, but by god we are going to have to take a look at things. It's time to review where we are with that alliance," said Sam Clovis, who has been the Trump campaign's top policy official since last August. (Washington Post, 07.22.16).
  • "My opinion is in the relations with Russia we have approached a benchmark: we should manage preventing a new arms race and a new cold war," Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.  (Tass, 07.17.16).
  • “Potential adversaries continue an unprecedented modernization effort across the full spectrum of nuclear capabilities ….Russia places the highest priority and investment on the maintenance of its robust arsenal of strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons,” Commander of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command Robin Rand said. (CONGDP, 07.14.16).
  • "Threats from countries such as Russia and North Korea remain very real," new UK Prime Minister Theresa May said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that accusations against Russia in the sphere of nuclear security "are not correct and we hope that Mrs. Prime Minister will soon adopt not a subjective, but an objective point of view on our country." A recent report  by the Royal United Services Institute  says the risk of an attack has been made more likely due to the deterioration in relations between Nato and Moscow and that Russia is "the primary source of potential nuclear risk to the UK, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future".  (Tass, 07.19.16, International Business Times, 07.18.16).
  • Between ethnic Russians leaving for Russia and Balts leaving for the UK the three Baltic states are emptying out -- Latvia and Lithuania lost 8.3 and 11.3 percent of their residents last year alone -- whole regions are on course to completely empty of people by 2050. (Jamestown, 07.21.16).

Missile defense:

  • No significant developments.

Nuclear arms control:

  • No significant developments.

Counter-terrorism:

  • French police have confirmed the death of one more Russian citizen in the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice. (Tass, 07.19.16).
  • According to the figures of the Turkish General Staff, of the 913 detained for suspected Islamic State links in 2015, 99 were of Russian origin.  (Moscow Times, 07.21.16).
  • A Kazakh court has sentenced a man to seven years in prison for joining the Islamic State extremist group in Syria. (RFE/RL, 07.19.16).
  • Kazakh officials say they believe they have captured the lone gunman in multiple attacks that President Nursultan Nazarbaev described as a "terrorist act," which targeted police and left five people dead in  Almaty. (RFE/RL, 07.18.16).

Cyber security:

  • U.S. authorities have charged Ukrainian national Artem Vauliwho founded the world's biggest online piracy site with distributing over $1 billion worth of illegally copied films, music, and other content. (RFE/RL, 07.21.16).

Energy exports from CIS:

  • Russian oil output will exceed the former Soviet record set almost 30 years ago by the end of 2018, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Production will climb over the next three years to 11.65 million barrels a day. (Bloomberg, 07.20.16).
  • Three export terminals on Russia’s Arctic coast shipped an average of 230,000 barrels of crude in the second quarter of 2016. This figure is almost equal to Libya’s total daily exports, according to Bloomberg calculations.(Oilprice, 07.21.16).
  • Saudi Arabia has reclaimed the mantle from Russia as China’s top crude supplier. (Bloomberg, 07.21.16).

Bilateral economic ties:

  • JSC TVEL, the fuel company of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom has signed with a U.S. nuclear power plant operator the first contract on testing Russia’s TVS-Kvadrat nuclear fuel, Rosatom said. TVEL Vice President Oleg Grigoryev said in May that the first Russian test nuclear fuel assemblies TVS-K would be loaded into U.S. reactors in 2018. (Tass, 07.19.16).

Other bilateral issues:

  • “I would love to have a good relationship where Russia and I, instead of, and us, and the U.S., instead of fighting each other we got along. It would be wonderful if we had good relationships with Russia so that we don't have to go through all of the drama,” Donald J. Trump said. (New York Times, 07.20.16).
  • National Intelligence Director James Clapper said that Russian President Vladimir Putin may not be as strong as he appears. "We watch public opinion in Russia, and I think his popularity may be a little brittle. Given the strains on the economy and the impacts on individuals - unemployment, wages, pensions - it's not clear to me that the rhetoric about Russia as a great power exerting itself in far-flung places like Ukraine and Syria is going to continue to resonate with the Russian public," he said. (Washington Post, 07.22.16).
  • Texas executive Alexander Fishenko who acted as an agent for the Russian government and illegally exported cutting-edge military technology to Russia has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. (RFE/RL, 07.22.16).
  • The Royal Thai police have arrested Russian citizen Dmitry Ukrainsky, 44 and Uzbekistani citizen Olga Komova, 25, at the request of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation . The FBI suspects the duo of stealing $28.5 million from bank accounts of citizens of several countries. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has contacted the Thai authorities in order to prevent the extradition of Ukrainsky. (Tass 07.22.16, Tass, 07.21.16).

 

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

  • Crude has traded between about $44 and $51 a barrel since early May. Russia, which based this year’s budget on the price of $50 a barrel, needs oil at $82 to balance its budget, according to ministry forecasts.  (Bloomberg, 07.19.16).
  • An operator training simulator developed by the National Research Nuclear University has been launched at the Rostov nuclear power plant in Russia. (World Nuclear News, 07.22.16).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin called Friday for a new anti-doping commission to be created to shape Russia's future strategy, as the country faces possible exclusion from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. (AP, 07.22.16).
  • The idea of what constitutes a great power has changed in the last year, according to Russia’s Levada pollsters. Many citizens have started prioritizing military strength (48 percent). Although in 2015 respondents believed Russia to be a great power primarily because of the population's wellbeing and the country's economic potential, a year later the importance of these factors fell from 58 percent in 2015 to 39 percent in 2016. (RBTH, 07.18.16).

Defense and Aerospace:

  • Russia has offered India the joint construction of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a source in the Indian Navy. (Tass, 07.20.16).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

  • Russia's main domestic security agency has opened a criminal probe into officials with the country's top investigative body over allegations that they received bribes from a crime syndicate led by Zakharia Kalashov and committed other official misconduct. A Moscow court later formally placed the suspects under arrest, according to Russian media reports.(RFE/RL, 07.20.16).
  • Some 80 percent of pensioners trading outside Moscow metro stations are working for organized crime syndicates, a Russian official has claimed. (Moscow Times, 07.22.16).

Foreign affairs and trade:

  • Syria:
    • The United States and Russia agreed Friday to take steps that could reduce the violence in Syria, but Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said they will not outline what they are to prevent "spoilers" from disrupting the initiative. Kerry said implementing the steps could address two key problems: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad 's disregard of a February cease-fire agreement, and attempts by some extremists to cloak their attacks by intermingling with opposition groups supported by the U.S. Arguing that al-Nusra is listed as a terrorist organization just like Isis, Mr Kerry said critics of fighting al-Nusra had “their priorities completely screwed up.” In his turn Lavrov said the two sides had reached "a common understanding with regard to joint steps." The word "coordination" was never mentioned in their remarks to reporters, even though Kerry came to Moscow with a detailed proposal for the United States and Russia to share military intelligence in Syria and "synchronize" military operations to fight radical Islamists. (Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, 07.16.16, Financial Times, 07.15.16.).
    • Russian aircraft bombed a rebel base in South-East Syria used by U.S. and U.K. special forces last month, the Wall Street Journal Newspaper reported Friday. The garrison in the village of At-Tanf near the Jordanian border was attacked June 16. A 20 strong British contingent moved off the site 24 hours prior to the Russian strike, the Wall Street Journal reported. (Moscow Times, 07.22.16).
    • The Obama administration has begun to see Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, as a global threat that could eventually rival the Islamic State, echoing a Russian argument that it has long resisted. A new U.S. proposal to coordinate counterterrorism operations in Syria with Russia, discussed by President Obama last week with President Vladimir Putin,  would start with coordinated U.S. and Russian strikes against al-Nusra. (Washington Post, 07.21.16).
    • “I think we have to get rid of ISIS before we get rid of Assad…. The other thing you have is, is Assad is backed by a country that we made a power, O.K.? Iran. And Russia, O.K.? So why didn't we do something about that before we made Iran rich, and before we gave them this tremendous power that they now have, that they didn't have and shouldn't have had?” Donald J. Trump said. (New York Times, 07.20.16).
    • "I've expressed my reservations about, for example, sharing intelligence with [the Russians] ... which they desperately want, I think, to exploit - to learn what they can about our sources and methods and tactics and techniques and procedures," U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper said. Based on Russia's record of failure to deliver on promises, "what is it they've done that gives you confidence that if we do more with them or share more intel ... they're going to improve?" Clapper asked. (Washington Post, 07.22.16).
    • Syria’s main opposition group, High Negotiations Committee, said it doesn’t think Russia and the U.S. will succeed in reviving a cease-fire to pave the way for a political transition amid a Russian-backed siege of 300,000 people in the rebel-held part of the former commercial capital Aleppo. Syrian government forces closed the only road leading into and out of rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday. (Bloomberg, 07.17.16, Washington Post, 07.18.16).
    • Saudi Arabia will offer Russia access to the Gulf Cooperation Council Market and regional investment funds if it ends its support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said. “We are ready to give Russia a stake in the Middle East that will make Russia a force stronger than the Soviet Union” with access to a pool of investment “greater than China’s," he said. “We don’t disagree on the end game in Syria but how to get there," he claimed. (Moscow Times, 07.22.16).
    • The Russian business daily Kommersant reports that Lieutenant General Alexander Zhuravlev, first deputy commander of the South Military District, has been appointed commander of the Russian forces in Syria. (RBTH, 07.22.16).
    • Russia’s Tupolev Tu-22M3 long-range bombers delivered on July 21 morning another airstrike on the facilities of the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization (outlawed in Russia) in Syria, destroying two command posts of the militants, the Russian Defense Ministry press service reported. It has been a third airstrike of the Russian Tu-22M3 bombers on terrorist facilities in Syria recently. The first two attacks were made on July 12 and 14. (Tass, 07.21.16).
    • The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is getting ready for a voyage to the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean. The goal of the deployment is to check the combat capabilities of the ship and its strike group, including Russia's state-of-the-art KA-52K Katran helicopters. (Tass, 07.18.16).
  • Other countries:
    • Arab media outlets are quoting diplomats in Ankara as disclosing that Turkey's President Erdogan was warned of an imminent army coup by Russia hours before it was initiated on Friday. The spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said he had no information about Russian intelligence's involvement in warning Erdogan about the attempt. (FNA, RBTH, 07.20.16).
    • Russia urges Turkey to resolve all problems in a constitutional manner,  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. (Trend.az, 07.18.16).
    • Turkish state media says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in August, their first face-to-face meeting since a rapprochement in late June following the downing of a Russian warplane in November 2015. (RFE/RL, 07.17.16).
    • Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag has confirmed the arrest of the two pilots who downed the Russian Su-24 jet in November 2015 in Syria. (Tass, 07.19.16).
    • Russia is not considering the possibility of lifting embargo on goods from Turkey because this may affect domestic agricultural producers, Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev said on July 16. (Tass, 07.16.16).

Russia's neighbors:

  • Ukraine:
    • Ukraine said on July 19th seven government soldiers have been killed in the past 24 hours in clashes with pro-Russia separatists in the country's east.  That brought the number of fatalities in July to 30, making July the deadliest month for the Ukrainian military in nearly a year. (RFE/RL, Bloomberg, 07.20.16).
    • Both sides in the conflict in eastern Ukraine have subjected civilians to extended arbitrary detention, disappearances, and even torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch warn in a new report. (RFE/RL, 07.21.16).
    • The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won't call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington. (Washington Post, 07.19.16).
    • Two images released by the Russian government, ostensibly to help clarify why a civilian airliner was shot down two years ago, were digitally altered using Photoshop before being posted online, according to researchers at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, in California. Independent investigation group Bellingcat made similar allegations in a separate report. (New York Times, 07.16.16, RFE/RL, 07.15.16).
    • The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has said it detained a Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) agent who gathered military intelligence in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). (Tass, 07.18.16).
    • Pavel Sheremet, an award-winning journalist whose reporting challenged the authorities in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine over the past two decades, was killed on July 20 when the car he was driving was destroyed by a bomb in downtown Kyiv. (RFE/RL, 07.20.16).
  • Other neighbors:
    • Hundreds of Armenian protesters sympathetic to an armed opposition group holding hostages at a district police headquarters in Yerevan clashed with police on July 20 after their demand to provide food to the gunmen went unheeded by authorities.  (RFE/RL, 07.21.16).
    • Turkmen officials have closed the border with Kazakhstan for five days in line with increased security measures. (RFE/RL, 07.20.16).
    • Tajik officials say the number of Tajik migrant workers who left to Russia and other countries in the first half of 2016 has dropped by nearly 7 percent compared to the same period last year. (RFE/RL, 07.22.16).

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