Biden’s USA headed for confrontation with Russia? The troubling appointment of Victoria Nuland
Nuland’s actions helped produce the regime change in Ukraine which led to U.S. arms sales, U.S. sanctions on Russia, even the first Trump impeachment over the matter of anti-tank missile delivery. The coup damaged U.S.-Russian relations
Basic Notes on Victoria (“Fuck the EU!”) Nuland, more https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/25/basic-notes-on-victoria-fuck-the-eu-nuland/ BY GARY LEUPP, 25 Jan 21
On January 5 Joe Biden quietly announced the nomination of Victoria (“Fuck the EU!”) Nuland as Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs. This announcement may signal the inception of the confrontation with Russia placed on hold during the Trump presidency.
For four years the Democrats have pilloried Trump for “coddling” Putin, although in fact Trump has heaped sanctions on Russia bringing relations to their lowest point since the early Cold War. Now they want some more serious anti-Russian measures. They want their president, Commander-in-Chief of the Exceptional Nation and Leader of the Free World against its adversaries, return us to Clinton-Obama normalcy. That means “getting tougher” with Russia. But what does tougher mean?
Nuland is eminently qualified for the task of making things much worse, even provoking war with the other superpower that while lacking foreign bases, and spending a fraction of what NATO spends on military defense, has over 6000 nuclear weapons. (Remember? The U.S. developed and used nuclear weapons in 1945, the only country to ever do so. The Soviets followed by developing their own bomb in 1949, in self-defense. That’s when Truman established NATO as an anti-Soviet, anti-communist military alliance.)
Moscow feels a mounting resentment over the expansion of a hostile military alliance, formed during the Cold War under conditions no longer pertinent, to surround it. Is this hard to fathom? How would Congress view a gradual expansion of a Russian-led military alliance committed to spending 2% of its members’ GDPs on military spending to embrace Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Panama and maybe Canada next year?
Nuland is a career official, serving under multiple administrations, representing bipartisan imperialism. She was deputy director for “affairs in the former Soviet republics” in the Bill Clinton administration. Her task was to exploit the pain and suffering caused by the implosion of the Soviet Union to assert greater U.S. hegemony over Eurasia, using the traditional mix of covert operations, National Endowment for Democracy meddling, “color revolutions,” aid promises, etc.
During this period Clinton reneged on the U.S. promise to Moscow in 1989 that NATO would not advance “one inch” east after the Soviets accepted German reunification. Instead he drew Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, long members of the dissolved Warsaw Pact, into the anti-Russian military alliance in 1999. It was an extraordinary repudiation of the Bush-Gorbachev agreement, an egregious provocation of a now-friendly country (then headed by the buffoonish Boris Yeltsin), unremarked on by the U.S. press at the time as anything controversial. Since then the expansion of NATO has been treated as no more remarkable than the expansion of UNESCO. Thank Nuland in part for making you think relentless NATO growth is normal, and that it makes sense for North Macedonia and Montenegro to have joined most recently (during the Trump term).
Thank Nuland too, in part, for the “color revolutions” in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005). The (fake) concept of the popular uprising against (Russian-backed) tyranny, backed by an altruistic America that stands for Freedom and Democracy—that’s Nuland’s baby. She surely has plans for Belarus. And she must be deeply alarmed that the State Department did not try to interfere in the last flare-up of violence in Nagarno-Karabakh leaving Russian diplomacy to resolve the situation. (Just because Russia itself extends into the Caucasus and borders Georgia and Azerbaijan doesn’t mean that it should “interfere” in countries that ought by rights to be ruled by the U.S.A.—due to Exceptionalism and all.)
The extremely reactionary chauvinistic Nuland was deputy foreign advisor to Dick Cheney during the Bush-Cheney administration (2003-2005) and then U.S. ambassador to NATO (2005-2008). Under Obama she was Under Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, handpicked by Hillary Clinton. She is married to noted neocon warmonger-scholar Robert Kagan. Both were deeply complicit in spreading the Big Lies leading to the Iraq War in 2003. Nuland supported Hillary Clinton’s terroristic regime change efforts in Libya and Syria. But her main mission in life is to expand NATO. Joe Biden shares her passion for this project.
Nuland is perhaps best known for her pithy ejaculation: “Fuck the EU!” in a telephone call with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in 2014.
In that year, while Nuland built support for the coup in Kiev (Feb. 18 to 21), she boasted openly that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in supporting “the Ukrainian people’s European aspirations.” (This referred to the support of some Ukrainians for the violent overthrow of the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, on the basis of his alleged pro-Russian policies and his opposition to European Union affiliation under the conditions the EU was then offering.) To state the matter honestly: the U.S. spent $5 billion to install a government in Kiev that would request NATO membership (ostensibly to protect it from always-aggressive, always expanding Russia) and bind it forever to the U.S. military-industrial complex and “Free World.”
Since NATO membership since the end of the Cold War has invariably been followed by EU membership, it was easy for Nuland to pose as the champion of Ukraine’s EU membership versus the evil Russians (supposedly) opposing that membership. Yanukovych himself had negotiated seriously with the EU but rejected a plan for association due to its austerity provisions. Meanwhile Moscow offered an attractive aid package. This in the world of U.S. propaganda was a choice between Europe and Russia, with Yanukovych siding with America’s adversary.
The Maidan coup occurred just a month after Nuland was recorded discussing the upcoming event with U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. Nuland, who had joined Sen. John McCain and other U.S. politicians in offering cookies to the Maidan protestors, discussed with Pyatt who should serve as prime minister after the coup. Pyatt noted that the EU favored Vitali Klitschko, the ex-boxer.
“Fuck the EU!” replied Nuland, who wanted banker and NATO supporter Arseniy Yatsenyuk to lead the new government. She soon got her way.
Nuland worked with Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party (and one of the three leaders Nuland ordered Pyatt to keep in touch with) and the Right Sector militia. Both glorify Stephan Bandera, the Ukrainian fascist leader who aided the Nazis in rounding up Ukrainian Jews during the war. Tyahnybok publicly inveighs against the “Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine.”
When Congressman Dana Rohrbacher Nuland in a hearing was asked soon after the coup whether there had been any neo-fascists on the Maidan she refused to answer the question, stating there were “mothers, grandmothers, and veterans…all colors of Ukraine, including ugly colors” on the Maidan. In other words, a diverse anti-Russian crowd. (Notice how she ignored the existence of the 30% of Ukrainians who are ethnic Russians and were a support base for the president targeted for toppling. Just the sort of sensitivity to ethnicity you’d expect from a top U.S. State Department official who’d been comfortable with the slaughter of Iraqis.) Continue reading
Russia welcomes US proposal to extend New Start nuclear treaty
Russia welcomes US proposal to extend nuclear treaty, 9 News, By Associated Press
Gorbachev Urges Biden to Improve Relations With Russia, Extend Key Nuclear Pact
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Gorbachev Urges Biden to Improve Relations With Russia, Extend Key Nuclear Pact, Moscow Times, 20 Jan 21, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, has urged Joe Biden’s administration to improve U.S.-Russia ties and extend a key nuclear pact ahead of the U.S. President-elect’s inauguration.”The current condition of relations between Russia and the United States is of great concern,” Gorbachev said in an interview with the state-run TASS news agency published Wednesday, the day Biden will be sworn in as president.
“But this also means that something has to be done about it in order to normalize relations,” he said. “We cannot fence ourselves off from each other.” Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, has urged Joe Biden’s administration to improve U.S.-Russia ties and extend a key nuclear pact ahead of the U.S. President-elect’s inauguration. “The current condition of relations between Russia and the United States is of great concern,” Gorbachev said in an interview with the state-run TASS news agency published Wednesday, the day Biden will be sworn in as president. “But this also means that something has to be done about it in order to normalize relations,” he said. “We cannot fence ourselves off from each other.” ……. Gorbachev said he felt optimistic toward the future of U.S.-Russia ties, pointing toward the Cold War, another difficult time in the countries’ relations. As the last Soviet leader, he played a pivotal role in ending the Cold War, reaching agreements with U.S. President Ronald Reagan on denuclearization and a number of other issues. “At the Geneva summit, we agreed to establish bilateral working groups on all issues: nuclear disarmament, bilateral relations, humanitarian cooperation and regional issues. There were many issues — no less than now,” Gorbachev said. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/20/gorbachev-urges-biden-to-improve-relations-with-russia-extend-key-nuclear-pact-a72665 |
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Russia to withdraw form Open Skies Treaty, EU concerned
The horror of Russia’s nuclear submarines and nuclear trash dumped at sea
CTY Pisces – Photos of a Japanese midget submarine that was sunk off Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. There’s a hole at the base of the conning tower where an artillery shell penetrated the hull, sinking the sub and killing the crew. Photos courtesy of Terry Kerby, Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory. August 2003.
For decades, the Soviet Union used the desolate Kara Sea as their dumping grounds for nuclear waste. Thousands of tons of nuclear material, equal to nearly six and a half times the radiation released at Hiroshima, went into the ocean. The underwater nuclear junkyard includes at least 14 unwanted reactors and an entire crippled submarine that the Soviets deemed proper decommissioning too dangerous and expensive. Today, this corner-cutting haunts the Russians. A rotting submarine reactor fed by an endless supply of ocean water might re-achieve criticality, belching out a boiling cloud of radioactivity that could infect local seafood populations, spoil bountiful fishing grounds, and contaminate a local oil-exploration frontier.
“Breach of protective barriers and the detection and spread of radionuclides in seawater could lead to fishing restrictions,” says Andrey Zolotkov, director of Bellona-Murmansk, an international non-profit environmental organization based in Norway. “In addition, this could seriously damage plans for the development of the Northern Sea Route—ship owners will refuse to sail along it.”
News outlets have found more dire terms to interpret the issue. The BBC raised concerns of a “nuclear chain reaction” in 2013, while The Guardian described the situation as “an environmental disaster waiting to happen.” Nearly everyone agrees that the Kara is on the verge of an uncontrolled nuclear event, but retrieving a string of long-lost nuclear time bombs is proving to be a daunting challenge.
Nuclear submarines have a short lifespan considering their sheer expense and complexity. After roughly 20-30 years, degradation coupled with leaps in technology render old nuclear subs obsolete. First, decades of accumulated corrosion and stress limit the safe-dive depth of veteran boats. Sound-isolation mounts degrade, bearings wear down, and rotating components of machinery fall out of balance, leading to a louder noise signature that can be more easily tracked by the enemy. …….
The Soviet Union and Russia built the world’s largest nuclear-powered navy in the second half of the 20th century, crafting more atom-powered subs than all other nations combined. At its military height in the mid-1990s, Russia boasted 245 nuclear-powered subs, 180 of which were equipped with dual reactors and 91 of which sailed with a dozen or more long-range ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads………
A majority of the Soviet’s nuclear submarine classes operated from the Arctic-based Northern Fleet, headquartered in the northwestern port city of Murmansk. The Northern Fleet bases are roughly 900 kilometers west of the Kara Sea dumping grounds. A second, slightly smaller hub of Soviet submarine power was the Pacific Fleet, based in and around Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast above North Korea. Additional Soviet-era submarines sailed from bases in the Baltic and Black Seas.
…….. the disposal of these submarines posed more problems than previous conventional vessels. Before crews could chop the vessels apart, the subs’ reactors and associated radioactive materials had to be removed, and the Soviets didn’t always do this properly.
Mothballed nuclear submarines pose the potential for disaster even before scrapping begins. In October of 1995, 12 decommissioned Soviet subs awaited disposal in Murmansk, each with fuel cells, reactors, and nuclear waste still aboard. When the cash-strapped Russian military didn’t pay the base’s electric bills for months, the local power company shut off power to the base, leaving the line of submarines at risk of meltdown. Military staffers had to persuade plant workers to restore power by threatening them at gunpoint.
The scrapping process starts with extracting the vessel’s spent nuclear fuel from the reactor core. The danger is immediate: In 1985, an explosion during the defueling of a Victor class submarine killed 10 workers and spewed radioactive material into the air and sea. Specially trained teams must separate the reactor fuel rods from the sub’s reactor core, then seal the rods in steel casks for transport and storage (at least, they seal the rods when adequate transport and storage is available—the Soviets had just five rail cars capable of safely transporting radioactive cargo, and their storage locations varied widely in size and suitability). Workers at the shipyard then remove salvageable equipment from the submarine and disassemble the vessel’s conventional and nuclear weapons systems. Crews must extract and isolate the nuclear warheads from the weapons before digging deeper into the launch compartment to scrap the missiles’ fuel systems and engines.
When it is time to dispose of the vessel’s reactors, crews cut vertical slices into the hull of the submarine and chop out the single or double reactor compartment along with an additional compartment fore and aft in a single huge cylinder-shaped chunk. Once sealed, the cylinder can float on its own for several months, even years, before it is lifted onto a barge and sent to a long-term storage facility.
But during the Cold War, nuclear storage in Soviet Russia usually meant a deep-sea dump job. At least 14 reactors from bygone vessels of the Northern Fleet were discarded into the Kara Sea. Sometimes, the Soviets skipped the de-fueling step beforehand, ditching the reactors with their highly radioactive fuel rods still intact.
According to the Bellona, the Northern Fleet also jettisoned 17,000 containers of hazardous nuclear material and deliberately sunk 19 vessels packed with radioactive waste, along with 735 contaminated pieces of heavy machinery. More low-level liquid waste was poured directly into the icy waters.
But during the Cold War, nuclear storage in Soviet Russia usually meant a deep-sea dump job. At least 14 reactors from bygone vessels of the Northern Fleet were discarded into the Kara Sea. Sometimes, the Soviets skipped the de-fueling step beforehand, ditching the reactors with their highly radioactive fuel rods still intact.
According to the Bellona, the Northern Fleet also jettisoned 17,000 containers of hazardous nuclear material and deliberately sunk 19 vessels packed with radioactive waste, along with 735 contaminated pieces of heavy machinery. More low-level liquid waste was poured directly into the icy waters.
Another submarine is perhaps a bigger risk for a radioactive leak. K-159, a November class, suffered a radioactive discharge accident in 1965 but served until 1989. After languishing in storage for 14 years, a 2003 storm ripped K-159 from its pontoons during a transport operation, and the battered hulk plunged to the floor of the Barents Sea, killing nine crewmen. The wreck lies at a depth of around 250 meters, most likely with its fueled and unsealed reactors open to the elements.
Russia has announced plans to raise the K-27, the K-159, and four other dangerous reactor compartments discarded in the Arctic. As of March 2020, Russian authorities estimate the cost of the recovery effort will be approximately $330 million.
The first target is K-159. But lifting the sunken sub back to the surface will take a specially built recovery vessel, one that does not yet exist. Design and construction of that ship is slated to begin in 2021, to be finished by the end of 2026. Now, in order to avoid an underwater Chernobyl, the Russians are beginning a terrifying race against the relentless progression of decay. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a34976195/russias-nuclear-submarine-graveyard/
Russia eager to salvage nuclear weapons treaty, once Biden is USA president
 For Russia, nuclear arms curbs with Biden are a ‘no brainer’ https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2021/01/15/for-russia-nuclear-arms-curbs-with-biden-are-a-no-brainer-.html Jonathan Brown Agence France-Presse Moscow / Fri, January 15, 2021 Russian President Vladimir Putin holds a video conference call with Mikhail Degtyarev, an LDPR party lawmaker, in Kerch, Crimea, on July 20, 2020. (Sputnik/AFP/Alexey Druzhinin )
When US President-elect Joe Biden enters the White House next week his administration will be in a race against time to salvage a landmark nuclear arms accord with Russia. The New START treaty, which expires just 16 days after Biden’s inauguration, is the last major arms reduction pact between old foes whose bulging nuclear stockpiles dominated fears for global security during the Cold War.
But the fast-approaching deadline to find compromise comes as tensions between Moscow and Washington are at fever pitch over recent hacking allegations, and after Biden vowed to take a firm stand against Russia. The stakes of reaching an agreement are high, says Elena Chernenko, a foreign editor at Russia’s Kommersant newspaper who has closely followed negotiations. “The treaty limits the chances of one side miscalculating the intentions or plans of the other, which we saw happen several times leading to very dangerous moments during the Cold War,” she told AFP.
Any agreement is also likely to define spending priorities for both governments, said Russian political columnist Vladimir Frolov. Extending New START could determine both in Moscow and Washington whether “more money than necessary would have to be spent on nuclear toys as opposed to health care,” he told AFP.
New START was signed in 2010 between then-US president Barack Obama and former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev, curbing warheads to 1,550 each and restricting numbers of launchers and bombers.
Biden will be eager to score a big diplomatic win early in his term, but he is also under pressure to tread a fine line and make good on a campaign promise to be tough on Russia. Lawmakers in the US demanded punishment for Russia last year after concluding that Kremlin-backed hackers were behind a sweeping cyber intrusion into government institutions.
That standoff is just the latest in a litany of disagreements over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and allegations of Russian election meddling. Still, rhetoric from Moscow and Washington as the New START expiration deadline approaches has raised hopes that arms control could offer a rare area of compromise. Biden’s incoming national security advisory Jake Sullivan said this month that the president-elect had tasked officials with looking at extending New START “right out of the gates”.
In Moscow, Putin recently proposed a one-year extension without preconditions and tasked Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with getting a “coherent” US response to the offer. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a champion of Soviet-era arms accords with the United States, said this week he expects Biden to prolong the accord and urged both sides “to negotiate further reductions”.
“Russia is on record at the highest level that it wants to extend the treaty for five years without any preconditions,” said Frolov, the columnist. Moscow is in favor of an extension, he said, because it would allow Russia to modernize its own nuclear forces at an affordable and measured pace, without rushing into an arms race. Frolov added that Russia was unlikely to sabotage negotiations just to make Biden appear weak at the onset of his tenure, saying the Kremlin “does not care about Biden’s wins”.
For Putin, extending New START is “a no brainer,” Frolov said. Negotiations under US President Donald Trump stumbled over an American demand that China become party to the agreement – Beijing having shown no interest in joining. That demand was highlighted in an embarrassing episode last June, when a US negotiator at arms control talks in Vienna tweeted a picture of China’s flag next to empty chair. “China is a no-show,” US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea wrote, even though Beijing was never expected to attend.
With the dawn of the Biden era, that tone of negotiation has likely come to an end, analysts believe. “There are now adults in the room in the United States, so even with these areas of confrontation, maybe this is the one avenue where Moscow and Washington will be able to compromise to make the world a little bit safer,” Chernenko said.
While both Washington and Moscow have signaled a positive outcome for Feb. 5 – the New START expiration date – what comes next is a different question. “That’s the moment when Russia will come to the table with a big portfolio of grievances and demands,” Chernenko cautioned.
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An act of love — Beyond Nuclear International
Courts threaten freedom of Russian nature protector
An act of love — Beyond Nuclear International
Lyubov Kudryashova loves nature. Now she may be jailed for defending it
By Jack Cohen-Joppa
In Russian, her name means love. And it’s true. Lyubov Kudryashova loves the broad valley of Russia’s Tobol River, where it meanders out of Kazakhstan into the Kurgan Oblast. Her grandfather is buried there, she was born there, and she’s raised three sons there. As far as she knows, her ancestors have always lived there.
There, below the southern Urals, frigid continental winters give way to spring floods that inundate a landscape of oxbow lakes, wetlands, forests and fields. The waters sustain a large aquifer that Russia recognizes as a strategic reserve of fresh water.
“We, native people of the land, are against a barbaric attitude towards nature,” she says. “But our voices are too low.”
Which is why the passion of this campaigning environmentalist and entrepreneur has been met with fabricated charges of encouraging terrorism via the internet. She’s now on trial in a military court in Yekaterinburg, six hours away from her small town.
But Lyubov Kudryashova will not be spurned. “My ecological activity is going to continue. Well, I guess till the day the unjust court could takes away my freedom.”
In 2017, the government awarded an operating license for borehole leeching of uranium to Dalur, a uranium mining subsidiary of the Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom. The license to tap the Dobrovolnoye deposit around the village of Zverinogolovskoye condemned the very farmland Kudryashova’s father managed when she would accompany him as a child.
Dalur has two other leaky in-situ uranium projects in the Kurgan.
Many Tobol Valley residents feared environmental disaster when they learned that hundreds of exploratory wells would be drilled through the aquifer into the mineral deposit lying beneath it, without any public environmental review. Borehole leeching would eventually involve drilling thousands of wells and the injection of a million tons of sulfuric acid over 20-30 years, then withdrawing the dissolved minerals and chemically extracting the uranium.
Several times, activists tried to start a referendum and demand an independent environmental review, but met only refusals from the local officials.
Last fall, environmentalists surveyed some of Dalur’s other boreholes in Kurgan and documented much higher radiation levels than permitted. Despite the concerns, construction began on an in-situ leaching pilot plant and the huge clay-lined “mud pits” needed to receive the massive volume of toxic, acidified sludge produced in the process.
Beginning in 2017, Kudryashova was involved in the legal case against the Russian Federation over its refusal to conduct an environmental impact assessment before awarding the license to develop the mine.
That year, she also co-founded the Public Monitoring Fund for the Environmental Condition and the Population Welfare with the regional branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. One month later, a judge of the Kurgan Regional Court issued an order giving the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) authority to wiretap her telephone.
The Fund publishes information on the environmental impact of Dalur’s mining activity. Kudryashova writes, “Shortly after the completion of the case in the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and the registration of the environmental fund, a hidden judgment of another court was rendered that allowed the FSB to begin wiretapping my phone and, I believe, begin to look for fictitious crimes in order to stop my work.
“I guess money is more important than the radioactive contamination of land,” she observed.
So it was that on January 29, 2019, armed men led by an FSB captain broke into her family’s home and spent the day searching it. That summer the FSB got a local court to involuntarily commit Kudryashova to the Kurgan District Psychiatric Hospital for most of the month of July. She was kept from speaking with family or others outside without permission of the agency.
Then in March 2020, the FSB charged Kudryashova with 12 counts of “public justification of terrorism using the Internet” based on a specious forensic analysis of posts on the social network VKontakte, which, according to Kudryashova, never belonged to her page. The actual source of those posts remains unknown because the protocol and the DVD-R capturing those posts show evidence of fabrication and forgery. And at the most recent session of her trial in late December, a CD-R the defense had presented to the court for evidence was found to have been erased by an FSB operative.
Prosecutors say she advocated for violent overthrow of the constitutional order by re-posting memes with such seditious phrases as, “The fate of Russia is determined by each of us, what you personally or I do, then Russia will. A correct position can only be revolutionary” and “If the nation is convinced that the ruling power in the state is directed not at the development of its cultural, economic and other needs, but, on the contrary, at trampling them, then it is not only the right, but also the duty of the nation to overthrow that power and establish one corresponding to the national interests of the people.”
Kudryashova writes, “Nonviolent ecological activism, in the understanding of the rulers of my country, is a crime. That’s why prisons are full of people who wanted to protect nature, but those who harmed it are free… Ecological crimes against present and future generations are not subject to the judgement of a military court.
“I’m 55 years old and my life is not as important as the preservation of nature. My duty and responsibility are to make a small contribution in a great cause — to stop violence against nature and people. The price of atomic energy is the life of future generations.”
Her trial is in the Central District Military Court of Yekaterinburg, where the next hearing is scheduled for 28-29 January, 2021. Agora International Human Rights Group and the Memorial civil rights society in Russia have provided an attorney and other support for Kudryashova.
Letters in support of Lyubov Kudryashova and seeking dismissal of the charges against her should be addressed to the chair of the court collegium examining the case, Judge Sergei Gladkih, st. Bazhova 85, Yekaterinburg, Russia 62005, or by email to opo.covs.svd@sudrf.ru. Refer to Case №: 2-42/2020, Lyubov Kudryashova.
Jack Cohen-Joppa is the co-editor of The Nuclear Resister, the co-founder of the eponymous organization and co-winner with Felice Cohen-Joppa of the 2020 Nuclear Free Future Award in the category of Education.
How a Soviet spy helped to avoid nuclear war
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When a Soviet spy helped avert nuclear war Tim Rowland, HM Media, 2 Jan 2021,
……..December also marked the passing of George Blake, a spy who kept the Soviets abreast of just about everything the West was doing during the hottest years of the Cold War. ……
In Blake, the KGB knew what they had. As a prisoner in North Korea, he later said he was driven into the arms of the Communists after watching American bombers destroy villages and the civilians who lived in them. ………..
……..At a time of high tension, its intelligence showed the West that the Soviets were not interested in launching a first-strike nuclear attack. Blake had showed the Soviets that this aversion to war was shared by the West. It may have been just enough assurance, in times of high tension, to keep everyone’s missiles in their silos. As dysfunctional as the profession at times could seem, the spies had done their job. https://www.heraldmailmedia.com/opinion/tim_rowland/when-a-soviet-spy-helped-avert-nuclear-war/article_4b527a8b-67f3-5d70-9a71-d5e78743853b.html
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How the USA and Soviet Union planned to use nuclear radiation as a weapon.
This was initially seen as a great idea – you could kill all the people while leaving the omfrastructure intact for your own use.For decades, the thought of radiological weapons has conjured terrifying images of cities covered in “death dust.” Classified as a weapon of mass destruction — alongside chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons — it has remained a point of mystery as to why these devastatingly indiscriminate weapons were not pursued in earnest by more state and non-state actors alike.
What did early radiological weapons (RW) programs look like? How and why did they arise, and what accounts for their ultimate demise? Aside from a handful of known cases, why have RW programs not proliferated with the same alacrity as other weapons programs?
Thanks to the rigorous and rich historical work of Samuel Meyer, Sarah Bidgood, and William Potter of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, we now have more answers. Focusing on the United States and Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, the authors, in a recent study published in the journal International Security, trace the unique origins of these RW programs, as well as explain why they were subsequently abandoned. Their study, “Death Dust: The Little-Known Story of U.S. and Soviet Pursuit of Radiological Weapons,” reveals a fascinating web of causes, including organizational and bureaucratic politics, international competition, economic and technological constraints, and even the powerful initiatives of well-placed individuals.
While the authors’ work examines the past, it speaks directly to the present and future trajectory of RW programs. If you are interested in military innovation, the history of weapons of mass destruction, the sociology of technology, and science fiction (yes, science fiction!), the exchange featured below is for you.
Samuel Meyer, Sarah Bidgood, and William C. Potter: We define a radiological weapon as one intended to disperse radioactive material in the absence of a nuclear detonation. ……..
……….. May 1941 — the first reference to RW appeared in a U.S. government document: the Report of the Uranium Committee. The report identified three possible military aspects of atomic fission, the first of which was “production of violently radioactive materials … carried by airplanes to be scattered as bombs over enemy territory.” (The other two possible applications noted in the report were “a power source on submarines and other ships” and “violently explosive bombs.”) ………
Technological advances were among the major drivers of RW programs in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and RW were initially pursued in tandem with nuclear weapons and chemical weapons (CW) programs. The anticipated promise of RW as a weapons innovation, however, never materialized in either country due to a combination of factors, including technical difficulties in the production and maintenance of the weapons, diminution in the perceived military utility of RW relative to both CW and nuclear weapons, and low threat perceptions about adversary RW capabilities. ……..
the parallelism in many respects between the rise and demise of the U.S. and Soviet RW programs; and (5) the serious but ultimately unsuccessful effort by the United States and the Soviet Union to secure a draft convention at the Conference on Disarmament prohibiting radiological weapons.
MK: Are radiological weapons a thing of the past or do they remain an attractive option for some countries and non-state actors today?
The authors: We are encouraged that no country has either used RW in war or has incorporated them into a national military arsenal. We are concerned, however, that the Russian Federation, despite its own unsuccessful history with RW, has shown renewed interest in advanced nuclear weapons that seek to maximize radioactive contamination. We also worry that some countries may conclude that RW serve their perceived national interests, especially in the absence of international legal restraints. It therefore is important, we believe, to revive U.S.-Russian cooperation to ban radiological weapons and strengthen the norm against their use.
Morgan L. Kaplan is the Executive Editor of International Security and Series Editor of the Belfer Center Studies in International Security book series at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/death-dust-the-little-known-story-of-radiological-weapons/
The Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant: Rosatom’s dirty face- and the courageous opposition
problems, protests, reprisals” Produced by RSEU’s program “Against nuclear and radioaсtive threats”In the city of Krasnoyarsk, Rosatom plans to build a national repository for high–level radioactive waste. A site has been selected on the banks of Siberia’s largest river, the Yenisei, only 40 km from the city. Environmental activists consider this project, if implemented,to be a crime against future generations and violates numerous Russian laws. Activists are also concerned that waste from Ukraine,Hungary, Bulgaria (and in the future from Belarus, Turkey, Bangladesh, and other countries) could be transported there as well. (47)
Russia’s nuclear-powered ice-breaker in trouble
Strategy Page 25th Dec 2020 , The world’s only nuclear-powered non-military ships are operated by Russia. These include five nuclear powered icebreakers and one cargo ship,nthe Sevmorput.
oldest Russian nuclear-powered ship, the Sevmorput was stranded off thewest coast of Africa as emergency repairs are undertaken so it can continuenits trip to Antarctica where it will deliver 5,000 tons of supplies and construction materials for a new Russian research base in Antarctica.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htseamo/articles/20201225.aspx
Moscow Times 16th Dec 2020, A Russian nuclear-powered cargo ship bound for Antarctica has been forced to turn back after sustaining damage, and will bypass Europe before undergoing repairs, state nuclear agency Rosatom said Wednesday. Green activists have expressed concern that the vessel will be sailing past several European countries on its way home during the winter storm season.
Russia marketing small nuclear reactors to the Arctic , (who cares about the toxic wastes?)
Rosatom to build small-scale land-based Arctic nuclear plant by 2028
Rosatom said it has reached an agreement with the government of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) setting out parameters for pricing energy that will be produced by the nuclear plant, which is expected to be completed by 2028……….
“I am convinced that a small-scale nuclear power plant will give a qualitative impetus to the development of the Arctic regions of Yakutia, stimulate the development of industry in Ust-Yansky ulus and improve the living standards of local residents,” said in a statement Head of the Sakha Republic Aysen Nikolayev.
The nuclear plant is expected to operate for 60 years but the press release did not specify how Rosatom plans to deal with the nuclear waste produced by it.
Rosatom officials said the small-scale nuclear plant is based on a proven technology that has already been tested in Arctic conditions.
RITM-200 reactors are already being used on the recently commissioned Arktika nuclear-powered icebreaker and six other 22220 design heavy Russian icebreakers that are being built, Rosatom officials said…….
“The implementation of this project strengthens the leading position of Rosatom in the world market of small nuclear power plants.”…….
Rosatom is also actively marketing the technology for export overseas, Likhachev said. https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/nuclear-safety/2020/12/rosatom-build-small-scale-land-based-arctic-nuclear-plant-2028
Russian Army Chief Warns of Nuclear Risks in Cyber Hacks, Space
Russian Army Chief Warns of Nuclear Risks in Cyber Hacks, Space https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/russia-general-warns-cyber-attacks-pose-nuclear-risks-tass-says Stepan Kravchenko December 25 2020, (Bloomberg) — The extension of military confrontation into the cyber sphere and space raises the risks of incidents involving nuclear weapons, Russia’s top general warned Thursday, highlighting concerns about growing tensions.Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/russia-general-warns-cyber-attacks-pose-nuclear-risks-tass-says
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Russia keenly marketing nuclear technology to Bolivia
 Rosatom may put stages I, II of nuclear center in Bolivia into operation in 2021, TASS, 25 Dec 20, On March 6, 2016, Russia and Bolivia concluded an inter-governmental agreement on cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and construction of a nuclear research center in El Alto MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. The Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation is continuing the construction of the Center for Nuclear Research and Technologies in Bolivia, despite the difficult political situation in that country. Next year the company plans to commission the first and second stages of the facility, Head of Rosatom Alexey Likhachev said on Friday.”Despite two revolutions, work continues in Bolivia. Next year we will start commissioning facilities of the first and second stages of the Center for Nuclear Research and Technologies,” he said…….. Nuclear project in BoliviaOn March 6, 2016, Russia and Bolivia concluded an inter-governmental agreement on cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and construction of a nuclear research center in El Alto, at an altitude of 4,100 meters above sea level. The Bolivian government-funded $300-million project will be implemented jointly with Russia’s nuclear power corporation Rosatom………. https://tass.com/economy/1239807 |
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Russian environmental defenders under attack
For future updates follow RSEU on facebook.
For more information contact:
Vitaly Servetnik,
Russian Social-Ecological Union / Friends of the Earth Russia
Email: vitservetnik@gmail.com
Program Area: Environmental Human Rights Defenders
Member Group: Russian Social Ecological Union (RSEU)
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