Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1657

November 30:

For months, the Kremlin has been promoting the idea of a new security architecture for Europe, while offering few specifics for its planned post-NATO order. All of that, however, is changing. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Russian government has made public the draft text of its envisioned European security treaty. The proposed agreement, based on the principle that "no one state, and no one international organization could strengthen their security at the expense of other countries and organizations," includes provisions that would prohibit “any actions” taken on the territory of a signatory nation from adversely affecting the security of a third party to the treaty – a stipulation that observers say would give “more leverage to block NATO activity on the territory of its members in Central and Eastern Europe.”

December 1:

The strategic “reset” now underway in Russian-American relations will include dramatically diminished oversight of Russia’s strategic arsenal. According to the Washington Times, the U.S. will soon lose the right to station observers in Russia to watch the latter’s production of long-range missiles. The cause for the cessation of full time, on-site access to Russia’s missile industry is unclear. Administration officials say the culprit is a secret accord signed in the latter days of the Bush administration, while Republican opponents argue that the arrangement was hammered out by the Obama administration this past October as part of new strategic arms control talks with the Kremlin. Whatever the cause, the U.S.-staffed Votkinsk Portal Monitoring Facility located 600 miles east of Moscow at the site where Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles are assembled will go offline on December 5th, with the expiration of the START Treaty. No provisions have yet been made by the two governments to extend this oversight once START has lapsed.

December 3:

Russia’s notoriously corrupt court system will soon become a bit more transparent. The Moscow Times reports that Russia’s Constitutional Court, Supreme Arbitration Court and Supreme Court have joined forces to create a new agency through which to disseminate legal news, opinions and rulings. The agency, known as the Russian Agency of Legal and Court Information, or RAPSI, is an early step in the push for greater judicial transparency now being sought by the Kremlin. The announcement follows President Dmitry Medvedev’s signing of a new law ordering greater transparency in Russia’s courts. “If there is no trust, there is no legitimacy of the courts and, therefore, of the government in general,” Constitutional Court chief justice Valery Zorkin has told reporters by way of explanation.

December 4:

Just one day before its expiration, Russia and the United States have agreed to preserve the provisions of a key arms control treaty. The Associated Press reports that the Kremlin has released a statement confirming that Moscow and Washington will continue to abide by limitations on nuclear technology and strategic weaponry in the weeks ahead “in the spirit” of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. Negotiators from the two countries, meanwhile, are hard at work forging a follow-on agreement to START – one that would codify steep cuts to the Russian and American strategic arsenals which have been agreed to by Presidents Putin and Obama.

December 8:

Three of Russia’s leading public intellectuals are planning to establish a new organization tasked with formulating an agenda for economic renewal, Interfax reports. The private-sector effort - launched by former “Yabloko” head Grigori Yavlinsky, Svobodnaya Mysl editor Vyacheslav Inozemtsev and Business Russia leader Boris Titov – aims to jump-start Russia’s modernization. "The country is gradually rolling down into the raw-material-economy model. We cannot wait any longer,” Titov has told reporters. “If the authorities themselves are unwilling to develop this [modernization] strategy, it should be done for them." According to Titov, the new organization – to be named zamodernizatsiyu.ru – is expected to be launched early in 2010, with a preliminary draft of its modernization priorities released some six months later, in June.