The mystery of access

Excited citizens may calm down. Contrary to the content of the American-Russian statement posted on the official Kremlin site, the Foreign’s legs will not be at domestic nuclear facilities.

Last Saturday, the text of the joint statement of the presidents of Russia and the United States on the strengthening of nuclear security appeared on www.kremlin.ru. The penultimate paragraph of the document met the worst expectations of patriotic citizens who were afraid that Vladimir Putin would give in to a shameless American pressure. Will yield and sacrifice the most expensive that every Russian has is nuclear potential. In short, it will open Russian arsenals for foreign controllers. The statement said that such "visits" of the objects of Rosatom and the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense are possible this year. By Monday, another text appeared in which the notorious paragraph was absent. An explanation also followed: a draft of a joint statement was published by mistake.

Since 1991, the United States, together with Russia, has been implementing the program “Joint a Reducing of the Threat” (it is also called the Nanna-Lugar program). The Americans spent billions of dollars to ensure the safety of transportation and storage of Russian nuclear ammunition. For American money, security systems, computers, fire extinguishers, fire engines, special railway cars were purchased and purchased and much more. The United States even provided the units of the 12th head of the Ministry of Defense detectors for lies for the universal check of personnel. However, during the implementation of the program, serious problems were discovered. So, the Americans periodically had an understandable desire to check how billions were spent, but this was completely impossible: foreigners could not visit under -secret objects where nuclear weapons were stored. As a result, they had to put up with the system proposed by the Russian military department. Arriving in Moscow, the Americans demanded to provide one or another fire extinguisher or computer (inventory numbers were assigned to all purchased "objects"). A few days later the required copy was delivered to the capital. Sometimes the inspectors were forced to be content with viewing photos.

A few years ago, the Big Eight made the so -called global initiative, according to which it was supposed to provide Russia with as many as $ 20 billion to dispose of excess nuclear weapons, weapons uranium and plutonium withdrawn from the fleet of nuclear submarines. However, one of the conditions for the provision of these huge funds was just the access of foreign representatives to objects. It should be borne in mind that it was only about those objects where foreign states would provide financial assistance.

Russian departments could not agree to these conditions. The global initiative hung. And here is the issue of access to objects, according to the draft of a joint statement, returned to the agenda. At least Moscow admitted the very possibility of this access. It remains only to guess what happened: either Bush did not finish Putin, or the supporters of the “hard line” won in a hidden struggle inside the Russian delegation. No wonder the Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov categorically stated after the summit: "We only agreed on the exchange of information. There will be no inspections."

However, it is possible that an already signed agreement has been published. For once, the Kremlin made a reasonable decision. But out of habit, he did not dare to explain to the public why he did it.