Strategic facilities in Russia will be supplied with explosive detectors

DATELINE: MOSCOW July 29

In the wake of the July 21 deadly gun and bomb attack at the Baksan hydropower plant in southern Russia, police patrols at energy and other strategic facilities must be reinforced and special equipment installed to identify explosives and radioactive substances.

First Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky gave the instructions at a session of a task force for crime prevention.

“Sukhodolsky gave instructions to reinforce police patrols and also to supply the personnel in charge of the security of fuel and energy facilities with relevant technical equipment – detectors of explosives and radioactivity, explosion containment chambers, built-in and movable metal detectors,” a statement issued on Wednesday by Sukhodolsky’s press service said.

“During the debate on adopting additional measures to tighten security at top-priority, hazardous and life-support facilities, it was noted that the Russian government had worked out several instructions directly concerning the Interior Ministry in relation to the blasts at the Baksan hydropower plant,” the statement said.

“The recent attack on the Baksan hydropower plant demonstrated the need to plan and implement a set of additional measures to protect strategic facilities from such attacks,” it said.

Source: Interfax-AVN

Putin meets deported spies and sings songs

DATELINE: FOROS July 26

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is currently visiting Ukraine, has met with the Russian intelligence agents deported from the United States.

“I met with them. We talked about life,” Putin told journalists on Saturday.

Asked whether they really sang karaoke songs during the meeting, Putin said: “Yes, we did, though not at karaoke, we sang “Where does Homeland begin from?” accompanied by live music.”

Asked about the future fate of the spies, the prime minister said, “They will be working.”

“I am sure they will work at worthy places. I am sure they will have an interesting and bright life,” the prime minister said.

Putin also confirmed that Anna Chapman was among the agents.

“There is not much I comment on here, I already said that this is the result of a betrayal, and betrayers always end up very sadly, normally, from drinking, drugs or under the fence. Just recently somebody ended his existence this way, but what for is unclear,” Putin said.

The prime minister confirmed he knows all betrayers by their names.

Asked whether he is going to punish them, he said, “This is not a correct question.” “It cannot be resolved at a press conference, they live by their own laws, and these laws are well known to all secret services.”

The life of Russian intelligence agents is “very hard,” Putin said.

“Just imagine: first, you need to learn the language to the mother tongue level, think and speak the language, and do what is prescribed by the mission in the interests of your home country for many, many years, without relying on the diplomatic cover and subjecting to the daily risk yourself and your relatives unaware of who you are and who you are working for,” Putin said.

“It is not my task to assess their work, it is up to specialists, their bosses, and the end consumers of the information of this kind, the supreme commander-in-chief – the Russian President,” the prime minister said.

Source: Interfax-AVN

The song is from the movie Sword and the Shield, one of the greatest Soviet spy movies — from an era when such films were entirely different from today’s Salt and Jason Bourne movies.

Russia to continue to arm Afghans

DATELINE: KABUL July 20

Russia intends to continue working with its international partners to equip Afghan security forces, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

“We intend to help the stabilization force created in Afghanistan with the central role of the UN by ensuring transit through the Russian territory of cargo and international forces personnel,” Lavrov said at a major international conference on Afghanistan in Kabul on Tuesday.

“We are also working with our partners on additional measures to equip the Afghan army and police. We are expanding cooperation in the training of personnel of Afghan law enforcement agencies,” the minister said.

Lavrov said Russia is actively working on restoring Afghanistan’s economy. This year, Russia cancelled a $891 million debt, bringing the total amount of debt cancelled by Russia to $12 billion.

Russia also continues to provide humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, specifically, the supply of wheat worth $15 million under the UN World Food Programme.

At the same time, Lavrov admitted that the situation in Afghanistan remained difficult. He reiterated the need to “settle the situation not only in Afghanistan, but also in the areas close to the Afghan-Pakistani border.”

The minister said that Russia was against dialogue with militants who failed to fulfill demands to abstain from violence, recognize Afghanistan’s Constitution, and sever ties with al-Qaeda and other terrorist structures.

“Removal of former terrorists from the UN sanctions lists is also possible on individual grounds,” the minister said.

Lavrov urged the Afghan government and international forces in the country to do more to fight the illegal drugs industry.

He also called for the restoration of the neutral status of Afghanistan, saying that the presidents of Russia and the U.S. have already spoken in favor of this.

Source: Interfax-AVN

CIS working on regional air defense integration

DATELINE: MOSCOW July 13

Regional air defense systems are being formed in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia within the framework of the joint air defense system of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Russian Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Vladimir Drik told Interfax-AVN on Tuesday.

“Intensive efforts are being made to form a regional air defense system of Belarus and Russia in the Eastern European collective-security region, and work has begun to create similar systems in the Caucasus and the Central Asian collective security regions,” Drik said

The joint air defense system of the CIS “performs early warning functions and also the functions of repelling a possible aggression,” he said.

The practice of military cooperation in air defense “has demonstrated that the CIS joint air defense system must be further developed,” Drik said.

Source: Interfax-AVN

Nothing new here. They’ve seemingly been “working” on the same thing for over a decade.

SCO Will not Consider Iran for Membership

DATELINE: MOSCOW June 10

Nations applying for membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) must not be under UN sanctions, or in a state of armed conflict with other states, says a draft provision on the rules of admitting new members to the SCO.

The draft is expected to be approved at the SCO’s summit, opening in Tashkent on Thursday. President Dmitry Medvedev will attend.

Nations applying for SCO membership must belong to the Eurasian region, maintain diplomatic relations with all SCO members, have the status of observer in the SCO, or partner-in-dialog status, and be actively involved in trade and economic and humanitarian exchanges with the member-states. They must not be under UN sanctions, or in a state of armed conflict with another country, or group of countries, the draft says.

Meanwhile, the draft statement on the outcome of the summit has provisions, saying that further efforts must be made to lay the legal groundwork for admitting new members.

The National Coordinators Council will be instructed to draft a standard memorandum, regulating legal, organizational and financial aspects of SCO membership.

The SCO is currently comprised of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia have observer status, and Belarus and Sri Lanka the status of partners in dialog.

The organization’s Foreign Ministers Council, at Kazakhstan’s initiative, imposed a temporary moratorium on admitting new members and observes in 2006. Also in 2006, Pakistan applied for full-fledged membership, and Iran applied in 2007 and 2008.

Belarus requested observer status in 2005 and Sri Lanka and Nepal in 2007. Ukraine, Egypt, Serbia, Azerbaijan, Turkey Qatar and other countries showed interest in establishing contacts with the SCO at different times.

Source: Interfax-AVN

Shevchuk confronts Putin

This blog has been limited to short blurbs taken from Interfax and the odd translation since its been up, mostly because I have better things to do than write opinion pieces or do any detail oriented pieces on the Russian military industrial sector even though as a hobby I spend a good 10 hours a week reading everything from VPK, to transcripts from press conferences given by people like Shamonov,  to hunting down interesting tidbits on goszakaz.ru. Unfortunately, the open source analyst and blogger thing doesn’t put food on the table.

My political leanings have hopefully remained a mystery to my many readers (this site has received just shy of 50,000 unique visitors in the past year),  but I dont have much love for the Russian liberal opposition mainly because I find most of the people at the forefront of it to be despicable human beings. This however does not make me a Putinite or a great lover of the often sclerotic two headed tandem that sits at the top of the Russian state today. I find myself agreeing with most of the ideas of Mark Adomanis whose blog I highly recommend to all my readers.

Anyway, yesterday Yuri Shevchuk from the fantastic band DDT really got in the face of Vladimir Putin on why the various municipal authorities in Russia have been cracking down/denying the Kasparov’s of the world permission to hold sanctioned protests. Shevchuk is a man I greatly respect  both for his music and his bravery. During the 1st Chechen war he and his band actually went to Chechnya and performed for Russian troops and Chechen civilians alike — something no other Russian entertainers dared to do. Given the situation in 1996, this was no USO tour and was in some respects a borderline insane thing to do. The man is a patriot and while I don’t like his politics Russia does need more men like him. Anyway, because of his history it was no surprise really when he did what really no other Russian celebrity (or Ashton Kutcher for that matter whose recent trip to Russia with a US trade delegation was a farce) would do and that is confront Putin head on with a camera in the room. The looks on the faces of the other celebrities in the room were frankly priceless — a mix of shock, and pity for Mr. Shevchuk, but that’s not what makes this event worthy of our attention. What makes the whole thing worthy of our time is Putin’s civilized, heartfelt, levelheaded and positively logical response about his commitment to freedom of speech, the need for a true dictatorship of the law, the limits of executive power in a transition state, and how he can not interfere in every or even most local matters when local officials only pay lip service to free speech or the law.  A proper summary of Putin’s position would take more time than I want to spend, and Putin does ramble on a bit in his unscripted response to Shevchuk, but the jist of it is when it comes to problems with permits and venues that’s for local government and the courts to sort out and not for the executive branch of the Russian state. There is no command from the Kremlin telling mayors “dont let these people march.”  The opposition can still get permits to march — they just dont like the venues being offered them. Is Putin telling the truth or is this just one more malicious attempt at painting a picture of “good Czar, bad Boyars?” You judge. But what really makes this whole thing memorable is that Russian state television actually ran Shevchuk’s comments and Putin’s response.

Really what should stick with Russia observers about all this IMHO is what Putin perceives to be the limits of the Russian executive branch. Putin talks about the frail nature of Russian civil society, how every new bureaucrat or person with power wants to milk his new found power for every cent, and implies that the Russian executive cant change what is really a problem of Russian culture.

This my friends is free speech Russian style. It’s still embryonic, fragile and positively alien to Westerners, but this is not the Soviet Union or even some neo-Soviet Union as some might paint it. The “oppression” the Shevchuk’s of the world are complaining about today is having 2,500 police meeting them at every venue, but have these cops seriously injured, killed or maimed any protesters? Are there protesters doing hard labor is Siberia? No, this is not the bullet in the back of the head oppression of Stalin or the 15 years in a labor colony oppression of Brezhnev.  This is largely a bureaucratic  oppression. An oppression of forms and fines and bribes and Siloviki who on the one hand demand protection money and on the other rush to their deaths to save children at Beslan. It is a complex picture of a complex society. But when the only fight left to the freedom fighters is over venue laws — I think it’s safe to say the greatest battles are behind us.

Russo-Ukrainian military industrial cooperation to expand

DATELINE: KYIV May 18

The final protocol adopted at the third meeting of the Ukrainian-Russian interstate commission tasks the governments with preparing a number of Ukrainian-Russian agreements in areas such as shipbuilding, aircraft industry, and energy, Ukrainian presidential administration chief Andrei Goncharuk said.

“It [the final protocol] contains a number of instructions to the government. There are 14 of them, if I’m not mistaken. They address issues including agreements on shipbuilding, aircraft industry, energy, and humanitarian issues,” Goncharuk said on Channel 5 television on Monday commenting on the results of the third session of the Ukrainian- Russian interstate commission chaired by the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.

When asked whether the meeting addressed the merger of RAO Gazprom and Naftogaz, Goncharuk said: “This issue was not discussed.”

Goncharuk believes the reason for “such caution” is that this issue should be approached in a balanced way, including from the point of view of economics.

Source: Interfax-AVN

Some 1,000 foreign soldiers to take part in May 9 parade of Red Square -Defense Ministry

DATELINE: MOSCOW April 5

Some 1,000 servicemen from CIS countries and the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition will take part in the Victory Parade on Moocow’s Red Square on May 9, the main department for international military cooperation of the Russian Defense Ministry told reporters on Monday.

“Each of the fourteen CIS and non-CIS countries [the U.S, the UK, France, and Poland] will send seventy representatives to take part in the parade. That will bring the total number of foreign participants to 980,” the source said.

The source said the foreign military participant’s accommodations will cost 10 million rubles. The foreign servicemen’s accommodations and food cost will be paid for by Russia, the source said.

The foreign servicemen will arrive in Moscow in late April by plane and rail transport, and transportation expenses will be the responsibility of the foreign states.

Source: Interfax-AVN

US, UK and French forces to march through Red Square

DATELINE: MOSCOW Feb 12

Army battalions from the United States, the United Kingdom and France – allies in World War II – will take part in the Russian Victory Parade on May 9, Russian Presidential Property Manager Vladimir Kozhin said.

“To date, the leaders and defense ministries of these countries – the U.S., the UK and France – have agreed in principle to their Armed Forces integrated battalions participating in the military parade on May 9,” Kozhin told a press conference on Thursday.

The Russian Victory Parade on the occasion of the 65th anniversary in the World War II will take place on May 9. It will start at 10:00 a.m. in Moscow and other hero cities. The most spectacular events will be held in Moscow, with military aircraft involved in the parade, Kozhin said.

The festivities will also be held in 24 towns of war glory.

Russia’s president and supreme commander-in-chief will address the nation at 10 a.m.

A parade will also be held in Sevastopol, where Russia has a naval base, the presidential official said.

Source: Interfax-AVN

President orders Russia’s police to be cut by 20% by 2012

DATELINE: MOSCOW Dec 25

The personnel of Russia’s police forces are to be reduced by 20% by January 1, 2012, under a presidential decree signed on Thursday.

President Dmitry Medvedev’s decree also ordered the number of departments at the Interior Ministry to be cut by two “with the aim of optimization of control” of the police force

The same decree gave the interior minister three months “to revise the rules on the selection of candidates for service or work in the interior services of the Russian Federation with their moral, ethical and psychological characteristics being taken into consideration, in order to raise the professional standards of the personnel of the interior services of the Russian Federation.”

The decree also ordered the Interior Ministry to come up with a set of measures to eradicate corruption in the police force. Such measures are to include “rotation of senior staff” and “development of a scientifically-based system of performance assessment,” a system that would include “automation of control processes” and use of “modern technologies.”

“There have been increasingly frequent instances recently of violation of law by [police] and abuse of office by them, instances that provoke a justifiable negative reaction in society and weaken the prestige of authority,” the decree said.

“The current structure of the interior services of the Russian Federation, the organization of their activities, the characteristics of the personnel of the [police force], its financing, and material and technical supplies for it fail to conform to modern standards and need modernization,” it said.

Some sources put the personnel of Russia’s police force at about 1.4 million.

Source: Interfax-AVN