Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1709

December 3:

The evolving strategic partnership between Russia and China has hit a new hurdle: intellectual property. Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye reports that "the export of Russian products for military purposes... to China during the past five years has steadily declined -- from 43% of the aggregate volume of deliveries in 2004 to 12%" in 2009. The culprit, according to the military newspaper, is China's aggressive "cloning" of Russian weapons - a trend that is continuing despite a bilateral agreement to safeguard intellectual property, and which threatens to undermine the arms trade between the two countries.


December 5:

The Russian assistant to a Member of the British parliament has been threatened with deportation by the country's security services on allegations that she is secretly working for Russian intelligence. Reuters reports that the suspect, Katia Zatuliveter, has been employed by Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock - a member of parliament’s select committee on defense policy - for nearly three years. Zatuliveter was detained on December 2nd by MI5, Britain's domestic security service, and is currently being held at an immigration detention center. Her seizure and detention is said to have personally been approved by British Home Secretary Theresa May.


December 7:

Georgia's Ministry of Internal Affairs has released the videotaped confession of six detainees accused of carrying out a string of bombing attacks in the former Soviet republic. The men, reports Eurasianet, are said to be part of an effort, orchestrated by a Russian military officer, to undermine stability in Georgia. In the confession, the suspects detail that they were coerced by Abkhazia-based Russian military officer Yevgeniy Borisov into carrying out a number of acts of sabotage - including planting a bomb at the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi. Russian news sources, for their part, have dismissed the accusations as a propaganda stunt.


December 9:

Russian officials are attempting to assuage popular fears over plans for a new, Soviet-style investigations unit created by the Kremlin. Interfax reports that a new draft law recently proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev seeks to form a single Investigation Committee for the Russian government, replacing the multiple investigative bodies that currently exist throughout the country. The notional committee, however, has prompted comparisons with the NKVD - the feared People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs which spearheaded domestic repression during Soviet times. But according to Aleksandr Bastyrkin, the committee's acting chairman, the new body is "not a monster of 1937." It will be established gradually, and - once operational - will seek first and foremost to address issues of domestic corruption and inequality. "We hope that in three to four years we will establish a robust, honest, highly professional and highly effective team of investigators," Bastyrkin has told Duma deputies.

The U.S. Congress has quietly approved a new civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the Kremlin, the New York Times reports. The agreement, some four years in the making, has been overshadowed of late by negotiations over the New Start treaty, but is potentially more significant for the "reset" in relations between Washington and Moscow, experts say. The deal "lifts longstanding limitations to allow extensive commercial nuclear trade, technology transfers and joint research between Russia and the United States." It also "eliminates a significant barrier to Russia’s importing, storing and possibly reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from American-supplied reactors around the world."

Obama administration officials have pinned high hopes on the deal. “The agreement represents a major step forward in U.S.-Russian civil nuclear cooperation,” Deputy U.S. Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman has said. “It enhances cooperation on nonproliferation” and “creates new commercial opportunities for Russian and American industry.”