Russia Archive

TEHRAN, Iran — What was the Soviet ambassador’s car doing, parked inside the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, during the height of the Cold War? Relations between staunch U.S. ally Riyadh and committed adversary Moscow were at an all-time low, as Soviet arms and funding were being delivered to a number of Arab nationalist, anti-royalist regimes, such as Nasserite Egypt, Marxist Southern Yemen and Baathist Syria. “What is the ambassador doing in our embassy?” Abdurrahman Ar-Rashed, the current editor of Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, recalls asking of then-Saudi Ambassador to London, Sheikh Nassir Al-Manqoor. “We do not […]

Last month’s uranium smuggling episode in Georgia has renewed concerns about nuclear terrorism. In that incident, a rogue Russian trader sought to sell 100 grams of highly enriched uranium on the local black market. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the primary multinational institution involved in these issues, 662 confirmed cases of smuggling of radioactive materials occurred between 1993 and 2004. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recorded 215 reported incidents of nuclear trafficking in 2005 alone (though it is unclear whether the increase resulted from more sales attempts or improved detection and reporting procedures). At the […]

Thirteen years ago, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin struggled to build a viable democracy against a post-Soviet backdrop of political instability and ideological ambiguity. While he could call for elections and appoint various ministers, it was more difficult to establish an ideology for both government officials and the voting public to ensure democracy thrived. In an attempt to fill the ideological void, Yeltsin appointed a committee to define Russian national identity in 1994. In the words of famed Russian expert Nicholas Riasanovsky: “[T]heir first task — admirably academic — was to gather everything that has been written and said on […]

In both his annual Kremlin news conference, which occurred on Feb.1, and in his appearance at the Munich Security Conference the following week, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced U.S. plans to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Insisting that the Russian government must consider how to ensure the country’s national security, Putin pledged to adopt a “highly effective” response. For several years, the U.S. government has been pursuing bilateral initiatives with select NATO members to deploy a small number of U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) interceptors in Eastern Europe. On Jan. 20, 2007, U.S. officials made a formal proposal […]

On Jan. 21, 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel conferred with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. Merkel has met with Putin six times since replacing Gerhard Schroeder as head of the German government in November 2005. This latest meeting highlighted the transformation of the German-Russian relationship, particularly in the area of energy. The Sochi encounter was the first meeting between Merkel and Putin since Germany assumed the presidency of both the European Union and the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations. With the expected departure from power of both Britain’s Tony Blair and France’s […]