517 Issue Of Yaderny Kontrol Bulletin Is Out

On December 12 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Washington. His key message was to extend New START before the end of the year. Although his visit coincided with another stage in the impeachment process, it is Trump’s opponents who agree with the message before all… Is strategic dialogue feasible between Russia and the United States? The leading material of the 517th issue of Yaderny Kontrol is dedicated to this question.

“Such a pessimistic state of affairs does not mean that dialogue is not plausible. The risks are too high to give up and hope that some sort of “multilateral strategic stability” will emerge on its own as Suslov and Karaganov imply. Russia and the US remain the only countries that have the technical capability to destroy each other as well as the rest of the world. The two countries still possess 92% of the global nuclear stockpile. That means that the dialogue is desperately called for,” argues Sergey Semenov.

Irina Rodina writes about the Russian effort to establish a WMDFZ in the Middle East: “As far as Russia is concerned, the country has facilitated and continues facilitating the establishment of such a zone in the Middle East through numerous channels. It always takes active actions and makes concrete proposals during Review Conferences, Preparatory Committees and on the margins of other negotiation sites in order to encourage the states of the Middle East to revitalize their efforts aimed at ridding the region of WMD. At the same time, it is obvious that such Russian actions to be really effective ones have to be joint measures of Russia and the USA, or to be just parallel with the American efforts, and, by all means, such actions have to be accompanied with real desire all states of the Middle East to establish a WMD-Free Zone in the region.”

Apart from the two memos, the bulletin features an interview with the newly elected IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. He tells Izvestya’s journalist whether the Agency will be reformed, how its cooperation with Iran is going on, what IAEA inspections to the DPRK depend on and why he is going to visit Russia in the near future.

The issue is available here (in Russian). The subscription form and the archive of the bulletin since 2000 are hosted on the bulletin page.