Russia

For the past eight years, a group of high-level American and Russian retired military and intelligence officials has met annually to discuss sensitive issues of U.S. - Russian relations. The purpose of the Elbe Group, launched by the Belfer Center in 2008, is to keep open an important channel of communications between the two countries that have the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. in the world. 

Russia, the United States, and other countries must cooperate to enable large-scale growth of nuclear energy around the world while achieving even higher standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation than are in place today. This will require building a new global framework for nuclear energy, including new or strengthened global institutions. The Belfer Center's Managing the Atom (MTA) Project and the Russian Research Center's Kurchatov Institute developed these and additional recommendations in a new collaborative report, published in October.

When explosions tore open the main pipeline carrying gas from Russia to neighboring Georgia during extreme sub-zero weather in late January, Georgian officials blamed Russia and Russia blamed Islamic militants. Whatever the cause, the effect was severe disruption of every aspect of Georgian life and heightening of international concerns about the multiple aspects of energy security. The incident occurred on the heels of Russia's closure of gas pipelines to Ukraine over a disagreement on pricing, a move that limited gas to much of continental Europe.

Belfer Center Newsmakers.