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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 October 3-10 , 2014

 

 


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

Nuclear security agenda:

  • Russia’s Rosatom and the U.S. Department of Energy held a meeting to discuss conversion of Russian research reactors to low-enriched uranium on October 2, 2014 in Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. It was reported earlier that the DoE suspended all contacts with its partners in Russia. The joint work, however, apparently continues - in September 2014 the GTRI program removed HEU spent fuel from Poland to Russia. (IPFM, 10.07.14).
  • In its annual account of civilian plutonium stock Russia reported a moderate increase in the amount of separated plutonium. As of the end of 2013 Russia owned 51.9 tons of unirradiated separated plutonium, 1.2 tons more than was declared in 2012. In its annual civilian plutonium declaration, the United States reported no changes in its stock of separated civilian plutonium in 2013. As of December 31, 2013, the United States reported having 49.0 tons of separated plutonium. (IPFM, 10.08.14).
  • Kazakhstan has removed a stockpile of Russian-origin fresh high enriched uranium (HEU) fuel from the critical assembly of the WWR-K Research Reactor in Almaty. The fresh HEU, representing 10.2 kilograms of uranium mass, was sent to a secure storage facility in Russia on 29 September 2014. The project is part of the U.S. Global Threat Reduction Initiative.  (IAEA, IPFM 10.02.14).
  • The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and the government of the United Kingdom have commissioned four transportation vehicles specially designed to transport radiological materials in Kazakhstan. (TCA, 10.06.14).
  • ISIS has ambitions to seize Tehran's nuclear secrets, according to a manifesto attributed to top ISIS member Abdullah Ahmed al-Meshedani. Most ambitious, if unrealistic, of the aims set out in the document is a plan to get hold of nuclear weapons — with the help of Russia. It proposes offering the Kremlin access to gas fields it controls in Iraq's Anbar province, provided Russia, in return, gives up "Iran and its nuclear program and hands over its secrets."  (Sunday Times, 10.05.14).

Iran nuclear issues:

  • Russia has urged the group of six international mediators and Tehran to agree on the place and time for the next round of Iranian nuclear talks, with a looming deadline less than two months away.  (RIA Novosti, 10.10.14).

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

  • NATO wants constructive relations with Russia even as it increases its presence in its member states in Eastern Europe, the alliance's new secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said. (Reuters, 10.06.14).
  • NATO's plan to beef up its military presence in eastern Europe does not violate a post-Cold War deal struck with Russia on military force levels in the region, new alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg said on a visit to Poland on Monday. (Reuters, 10.06.14).
  • Statements by NATO's new chief do not raise hopes of a rapid improvement in relations between Russia and the military alliance, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Thursday. (Reuters, 10.10.14).

Missile defense:

  • The United States Navy will commission its new missile defense base in southern Romania on Friday, one of two European land-based interceptor sites for a NATO missile shield vehemently opposed by Russia. The base in Deveselu will be the first to feature the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system and is scheduled to become operational by the end of next year. A second site, in Poland, is scheduled to become operational by 2018. (Stars and Stripes, 10.09.14).

Nuclear arms control:

  • For the first time, Russia, which is in the midst of a major strategic nuclear modernization, has more deployed nuclear warheads than the United States, according to the latest numbers released by the State Department. Russia now has 1,643 warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. The United States has 1,642, said the fact sheet released Wednesday. (Washington Times, 10.01.14).

Counter-terrorism cooperation:

  • A Kazakh friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could testify for the prosecution in the death penalty case against the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect in January. (RFE/RL, 10.09.14).

Cyber security:

  • The huge cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase that touched more than 83 million households and businesses.  According to Obama administration officials familiar with the briefings, no one could tell the U.S. president what he most wanted to know: What was the motive of the attack? ''The question kept coming back, 'Is this plain old theft, or is Putin retaliating?'''One senior official said, referring to the American-led sanctions on Russia. ''And the answer was: 'We don't know for sure.'''(New York Times, 10.09.14, 10.04.14).

Energy exports from CIS:

  • Russian oil output expanded 1 percent year-on-year in 2013 but could fall by as much as 10 percent through 2021, Moscow brokerage Aton said in a report published on Sept. 24. (Moscow Times, 10.09.14).
  • Royal Dutch Shell PLC has suspended development of unconventional oil in a Siberian field, its partner in the project said on Friday.  Shell said in a statement that sanctions were impacting some of the company’s current and planned activities in Russia, including in the Bazhenov area. (Wall Street Journal, 10.03.14).

Bilateral economic ties:

  • After totaling just $24 billion in 2009, U.S.-Russian trade jumped by one-third, to $32 billion, in 2010, and increased again by a similar proportion in 2011 to $43 billion. Since then, however, two-way trade declined to $40 billion in 2012, and dropped another 5%, to $38 billion, in 2013. This year’s performance to date is roughly in line with 2013 (approximately $9 billion in Q1). (National Interest, 10.09.14).
  • Visa and MasterCard could soon be forced to process all their Russian transactions through the "national payment system," an unfinished state project that has gained political traction this year amid clashes with the West over the crisis in Ukraine. (Moscow Times, 10.07,14).

Other bilateral issues:

  • U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said Thursday that there should be no sanctions relief for Russia until all foreign forces and equipment have left Ukraine, Kiev's sovereignty over its border has been restored and all hostages have been released. (Reuters, 10.09.14).
  • A recent spate of dangerous midair encounters between American military aircraft and Chinese and Russian planes in the Pacific is the result of increasingly assertive strategies by both U.S. adversaries to project power far beyond their borders, according Air Force Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, the head of U.S. Pacific Air Forces. (Washington Post, 10.05.14).
  • The U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to an effective defense, something a suspected Russian hacker and lawmaker's son, Roman Seleznev, has been deprived of due to inadequate access to his lawyers, the American judge presiding over his case said Tuesday. (AP, 10.08.14).
  • A district court in Delaware has sentenced a Russian man to more than a year behind bars for trying to smuggle military-grade night-vision equipment to Russia. (Moscow Times, 10.09.14).
  • Following a wave of forced closures of McDonald's restaurants across Russia, state prosecutors have opened an investigation into the U.S. fast-food giant's charity arm, Ronald McDonald House Charities. (Moscow Times, 10.08.14).
  • Russia has pulled out of a longstanding American high school exchange program after a teenage Russian boy who befriended a gay couple sought asylum in the United States on the grounds that he faced persecution at home as a homosexual. (New York Times, 10.06.14).
  • According to social polls of Russian state-owned polling center WCIOM, 73% of Russians questioned think U.S. is a hostile nation (compared with 25% in 2008), 32% think Ukraine is hostile (21% in 2008), 10% - Germany (1%), 9% - England, 6% - Poland, 3%. The share of those who think Georgia is hostile  dropped from 25% in 2008 to 1%. Sympathy towards China increased from 23% to 51%. 32% show sympathy towards Belarus, 20% towards Kazakhstan. (Vestnik Kavkaza, Kommersant, 10.09.14).
  • Anti-American sentiment escalated in Russia, as reflected in the polling trends—from 44% negative bias in January to 71% in May. (NI, 10.09.14).

II. Russia news.

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

  • Net capital outflows from Russia halved in the third quarter of the year, compared with the previous quarter. The Central Bank said the adjusted outflow was $5.7 billion in the third quarter, down from $10.2 billion in the second quarter and $61.7 billion in the first quarter. The bank said the net capital outflow by banks and companies reached $77.5 billion in the first nine months of 2014 compared with $45.7 billion for the same period a year ago. (Reuters, 10.10.14).
  • The ruble’s trading levels suggest that since the latest ruble selloff began last week, the central bank has moved the upper boundary of the band 12 times, from 44.40 ruble to 45 rubles, spending as much as $4.2 billion in intervention. As of Oct. 9, the new corridor for the Russian ruble extended from 36.00 to 45.00 against a dollar-euro basket, compared with 35.85 to 44.85 previously. (Reuters, 10.10.14, Wall Street Journal, 10.09.14).
  • Russia’s hard currency reserves stood at $457 billion by end-September, compared with $510 billion at the end of 2013 and $515 billion a year ago. (Reuters, 10.10.14).
  • The price of Brent oil has tumbled to $92.2 a barrel, placing the Russian federal budget in jeopardy. Russian analysts believe that the decrease in oil prices is related to demonstrations in Hong Kong, the strengthening of the dollar, as well as the drastic growth in oil production in the OPEC countries and the U.S. (RBTH, 10.07.14).
  • Year-on-year inflation hit 8 percent in September, driven up by the plummeting value of the ruble and Russia's bans on many food imports from the United States and European Union, according to data from state statistics service, Rosstat. (Moscow Times, 10.06.14).
  • Russia could temporarily freeze the price paid by consumers for some "vital products" if inflation soars, Trade Minister Denis Manturov said in an interview published Thursday. (Reuters, 10.09.14).
  • The Russian Parliament preliminarily approved a law on Wednesday that would allow the seizure of property owned by foreigners in Russia in retaliation for sanctions over Ukraine, a move sure to deepen the economic rift with the West. (New York Times, 10.09.14).
  • President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law switching the base used to calculate property tax rates from inventory values to cadastral values, heralding significant tax rises for many Russian homeowners. (Moscow Times, 10.07,14).
  • Official documents published Monday show the Kremlin has scrapped the president's annual budget address. (Moscow Times, 10.07.14).
  • The Russian government intends to replace 65 percent of imported meat, 30 percent of dairy and 30 percent of imported vegetables with domestic goods by 2020, according to an order published Wednesday on the government's website. (Moscow Times, 10.08.14).
  • More than 100,000 people turned out in the Chechen capital of Grozny on Tuesday for a birthday celebration in honor of President Vladimir Putin. (Moscow Times, 10.07,14).
  • Russia will appeal against a decision by Europe's top human rights court to award Yukos shareholders 1.9 billion euros ($2.42 billion) by the end of this month. (Reuters, 10.09.14).
  • Drugs claim the lives of the overwhelming majority of Russians who die young, a leading official said. In the past five years, 550,000 people between the ages of 18 and 34 have lost their lives in Russia, Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service, said. (Moscow Times, 10.05.14).
  • In Russia and Malaysia, billionaire fortunes amount to nearly 20% of GDP, twice the global average. (Wall Street Journal, 10.09.14).

Defense:

  • Russia will replace its existing missile warning system with a space-based alternative to help protect the country from nuclear attack, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Thursday. The so-called "united space system," or EKS, will comprise a new generation of missile monitoring satellites and modernized command centers. (Moscow Times, 10.09.14).
  • Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the country's military spending plans need to be "more realistic" and take into consideration forecasts for economic growth and budget revenue. The current plan calls for spending some $576 billion on defense in the next six years. (RFE/RL, 10.07.14).

Security, law-enforcement and justice:

  • A suicide bomber killed five police officers and wounded 12 others on Sunday in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, at a security checkpoint near the entrance to where thousands of people were gathering for a concert. The closest thing to a direct claim of responsibility for the bombing came shortly after the attack from a VKontakte account affiliated with an extremist group in Syria comprised mainly of Chechen fighters. (New York Times, Moscow Times, 10.06.14).
  • Russia's National Antiterrorism Committee (NAK) said a security operation in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan resulted in one militant being killed and large amount of explosive material being seized. (RFE/RL, 10.06.14).
  • Three militants believed to be responsible for murdering opponents of radical Islam were killed by security forces overnight Wednesday when they launched an attack on a police checkpoint, a news report said. (Moscow Times, 10.08.14).
  • With thousands of Russian Muslims pursuing religious education abroad, the country faces a proliferation of extremist Islamic ideology and increased ethnic tensions, the Prosecutor General's Office has warned. (Moscow Times, 10.08.14).

Foreign affairs and trade:

  • While in Russia, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will sign more than 30 agreements on finance, energy and high-speed rail cooperation. (Reuters, 06.05.14).
  • Rosneft has offered stakes in its two east Siberian oilfields to India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (Reuters, 10.08.14).
  • Opposition party Harmony Center, popular among Latvia’s  large Russian-speaking population, received 23.3 percent of the votes, earning 25 seats in the 100-seat parliament. (Moscow Times, 10.05.14).
  • Russia's food safety watchdog has approved the import of crocodile meat from the Philippines to replace the beef and pork banned under Moscow's restrictions on foods from Western countries, a news report said. (Moscow Times, 10.10.14).
  • The view that Russia should seek to join the European Union at some point in its future was shared by 65 percent of the country's population in late 1999, but that number has now hit an all-time low of 16 percent last month, according to a recent report by the independent Levada Center pollster. (Moscow Times, 10.06.14).

Russia's neighbors:

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin could hold talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko next week on the sidelines of a summit of Asian and European leaders in Milan during the ASEM (Europe-Asia Meeting) summit in Italy on Oct. 16-17. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande might take part in the talks with Poroshenko. (Reuters, 10.09.14).
  • Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on October 6 that there cannot be peace in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region until government control is reestablished over the border with Russia. (RFE/RL, 10.06.14).
  • Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the bill on vetting of officials, empowered to perform state or local self-government functions, into law Thursday, his press service announced. (RIA Novosti, 10.09.14).
  • Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday called for deploying hundreds more international monitors in eastern Ukraine after warning of growing threats to a fragile cease-fire with pro-Russia rebels there. (Wall Street Journal, 10.08.14).
  • One of the passengers killed in the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine was wearing an oxygen mask. (Wall Street Journal, 10.09.14).
  • Slovakia has reaffirmed his government's commitment to ensuring reverse supplies of gas to Ukraine. (Interfax, 10.06.14).
  • Norwegian energy firm Statoil has signed a deal to sell gas to Ukraine state gas firm Naftogaz. (Reuters, 10.05.14).
  • A group of Russian military servicemen are present in Ukraine to work on a map that would serve as the basis for separating the conflicting parties in the southeastern part of the country. (Interfax, 10.05.14).
  • Germany is considering sending soldiers and noncombat drones to Ukraine in an effort to help international monitors return stability to the country’s war-torn eastern region. (Wall Street Journal, 10.04.14).
  • On Friday heads of state from Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan are meeting in Minsk to formally cancel the dissolution of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) signed in the 1990s in order to prepare for the Eurasian Economic Union, which will be the largest common market in the ex-Soviet sphere and comes into effect in January 2015. (Russia Today, 10.10.14).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the law ratifying the treaty on the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. (RFE/RL, 10.03.14).
  • Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka has signed a law on the ratification of the treaty creating the Eurasian Economic Union, advancing a Russian-led drive to strengthen ties among former Soviet republics (RFE/RL, 10.10.14).
  • Russia has nothing against other CIS member states building closer ties with Europe, the only thing it insists on is that its allies properly discuss the possible economic risks to the Russian economy, President Putin said at the summit in Minsk. “We have never been opposed to closer relations with the EU, we ourselves want to move closer,” Putin said. (Russia Today, 10.10.14).
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized Moldova for refusing to hold consultations with Moscow on an accord that strengthens ties between Chisinau and the European Union. (RFE/RL, 10.10.14).
  • Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka argued that, once the process of rearranging borders according to historical claims begins, there is no end to it. "Then we would have to give to Mongolia and Kazakhstan and someone else practically all the territory of Russia and Western Europe and Eastern Europe -- except for Belarus," he said. "They [the Mongols] made it to us somehow but they didn't bother us. So what is the point of returning to what was in the past? We can't be dicing up the borders again." (RFE/RL, 10.09.14).
  • The European Union and Kazakhstan announced on Thursday that they had agreed on a new “partnership and cooperation” pact, a relatively modest deal that highlights the bloc’s scaled-down options regarding its eastern neighbors. (Wall Street Journal, 10.09.14).
  • Kyrgyz authorities say a 19-year-old medical school student from Kyrgyzstan's southern Osh region is "fighting" on the side of Islamic State militants in Syria. (RFE/RL, 10.07.14).

 

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