Black Monday for Russian-American relations

Washington announced the suspension of all contacts with Moscow in Syria, and Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the release of Russia from the Treaty on the destruction of weapons of plutonium.

Experts believe that this is only the beginning of nuclear blackmail. The cooperation of the two nuclear disarmament countries previously maintained tests by temporary crises in the relations of the two countries. Now it is in question and has become the subject of bargaining.

Russia notes that it is not going to use plutonium for military purposes, but the implementation of an agreement from 2000 linishes a number of requirements with the execution of the United States.

"Magnitsky" and Co.

It would seem that in common between the “Magnitsky Law” and the Agreement on the disposal of weapons of plutonium?

The “Magnitsky Law”, adopted by the American Congress in 2012 in the same package with the abolition of the Jackson -Vannik amendment, was directed against Russian officials guilty of the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. They are forbidden to enter the United States, and financial assets should be arrested here. Later, similar measures were taken by a number of other countries. And in the United States, legislators have since been working on a modification of a law providing for the expansion of its actions on all countries of the world, and not just on Russia. The US president may include in the list of foreign citizens guilty of corruption, torture, the persecution of human rights activists and those who expose the crimes of their governments. The bill "Global Magnitsky" was approved by the Senate and transferred to the House of Representatives.

The “Magnitsky Law”, which caused a response, “asymmetric” reaction of Russian deputies in the form of the “Law of Dima Yakovlev” prohibiting the adoption of Russian children in the United States, was directed against specific officials. Their circle is narrow. But, judging by the fact that this law is named in the decree of the President of the Russian Federation, it remains a strong irritant for the Russian political elite. Only this is not Obama, but Congress achieved the adoption of the "Law of Magnitsky."

Other conditions of V. Putin are much larger: the removal of all sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea and events in the Donbass; the reduction of American troops and military infrastructure deployed in the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe (it was separately noted that this includes the abdication of the Americans from the deployment of elements of the missile defense in this region); Compensation of damage from sanctions and response steps introduced by the Kremlin, and the presentation of the plan on "irreversible disposal of excess plutonium."

Prior to this, the president’s demarche of the Russian officials and federal media constantly emphasized that the Western sanctions and Russian “response sanctions” prohibiting Western goods - from the Spanish Hamon to Polish apples - will ultimately give a powerful incentive to the Russian economy, will allow modernization and import substitution. Above the words of President Obama that sanctions “tearing the Russian economy into shreds” frankly mocking the Russian TV presenters and their expert team.

The current compensation requirement looks as a belated recognition that the sanctions have caused damage to absolutely all Russian citizens, for which the president is responsible as the highest official of the state.

Even Trump thought

The White House restrainedly reacted to the exit of Moscow from the agreement on plutonia. White House spokeswoman Josh Ernest: “We are disappointed with this statement, but we were disappointed with a number of previous decisions of Russia, including the departure of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine and the disruption of a peace agreement on Syria, all these steps only increased the isolation of Russia from the international community.”

American congressmen - both democrats and republicans - caught the ultimatic tone of the Russian president. “If President Putin thinks that he can intimidate the United States, he is very mistaken,” said the Congressman-Democrat Eliot Engel from New York. “Once again, this (Decree of the President of the Russian Federation. - A.P. ) confirms that American sanctions have a significant impact on the Russian economy, and that Mr. Putin cannot confront them, threatening others, acting against the interests of his country.”

The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Republican of Republican Ed Royce, like Russian commentators, blames all Obama, but, of course, from other positions: "The mountains of empty words spoken by this administration on various issues: from Syria to Ukraine, they convinced Putin that he could afford everything."

The “cocky leader” was called the Russian president for the post of vice president from the Republican Party Governor of Indiana Mike Pence. “Russian provocations should be met by the power of the United States,” Donald Trump, a partner of Donald Trump, said during the television debate on October 4. - The American economy is 16 times larger than the Russian, our political system is immeasurably more perfect than “corrupt Kumov capitalism. We must also deploy a missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, which Barack Obama and Hillary refused, so as not to offend the Russians, in 2009. ”

During the debate with an opponent from the Democratic Party, Pence tried to disavow compliments to the Russian leader who previously sounded from Trump's mouth. The position of Moscow was criticized by Trump himself. Speaking at a rally in Arizona, he stated that “Russia violated the agreement on a truce in Syria, this should be put an end, and do it quickly. The “mutual affection of Putin and Trump” is threatened - this is another price of nuclear blackmail of Moscow, the local observers note.

Russian media often give experts from the analytical company Stratfor based in Austin, Texas. Former scouts often give strict assessments to one or another steps of the American administration. In this case, analysts note that the arms plutonia agreement is not the cornerstone of Russian-American cooperation and the practical effect of Russia's exit from the transaction is quite limited. But the fact that a number of strict requirements have been placed before America are “huge symbolic meaning”: “Putin’s decree indicates that other directions of cooperation between Russia and the United States in the field of nuclear disarmament risk being torn. This decision is like an attempt to show the price of refusal of dialogue in Syria and other existing disagreements. ”

After the whole day, Russia announced the suspension of an agreement with the United States on cooperation in scientific development in nuclear and energy fields, enclosed 3 years ago in Vienna.

In fact

The agreement on the disposal of arms plutonium (PMDA) today looks like a signal from other times when Russia and the United States could effectively cooperate, despite the contradictions. In 2000, he was signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and US Vice President Albert Gore. During the “rebooting” (overload) relations of the two countries in 2010, the heads of foreign policy departments Sergey Lavrov and Hillary Clinton signed the PMDA protocol with new obligations. The volume of processing remained the same - 34 tons of plutonium on each side (it would be enough for 17 thousand warheads). Specified the method of disposal. It was assumed that plutonium will be processed in the reactors. The document obliged the parties to "act in parallel."

Problems arose with the implementation of the agreement. Russia built a special plant for the disposal of plutonium in Zheleznogorsk, in September last year, Rosatom announced the beginning of the processing of weapons of plutonium there. In the United States, they were supposed to erect a similar plant for the production of MOX - mixed oxide fuel in the savannah, South Carolina.

But the American side lagged behind the deadlines (the plant will be built until 2048), the project cost has risen in price before our eyes (according to the NNSA National Nuclear Security Directorate, it is necessary to spend $ 12.5 billion more than it was invested in construction), and the Ministry of Energy decided to freeze the construction under the preposition of a budget deficit. In the draft budget for 2017, President Obama, it was proposed to generally refuse to process arms plutonium at this enterprise. Instead of converting plutonium into nuclear fuel, the object on the Savannah River will be used to dilute plutonium, which will subsequently be disposed of in Karlsbad, New Mexico, and placed in the vault of nuclear waste.

The State Department believes that such a change does not violate the contract and allows us to dispose of plutonium “decades earlier”. Russia is convinced that the method proposed by the United States theoretically allows you to re -use plutonium to create weapons. On April 7, Vladimir Putin called Obama’s decision to refuse to process Plutonium at the enterprise in South Carolin “Violation of the Agreement”. This is a violation, experts believe, became one of the reasons for Putin’s refusal to visit the nuclear security summit on March 31 - April 1 in Washington.

In the United States, Obama’s decision was ambiguously. Former Energy Minister Bill Richardson said this step undermines the trust of the American side in the implementation of other agreements to non -proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Prosecutor General of South Carolina Alan Wilson put forward a lawsuit against the Ministry of Energy, and the senator from this state Lindsay Graham is trying to block the administration plan in Congress and achieve the continuation of the construction of the MOX fuel from weapons plutonium.

But Russia's exit from the agreement (PMDA) was welcomed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) of America. In the statement of Ed Laimen, one of the leaders of this public organization, uniting 200 thousand experts, it is noted that Russia's exit from the agreement is to “eliminate the last argument in support of the program for the processing of weapons plutonium in fuel”, which, according to scientists, is fraught with the danger of the entry of nuclear materials into the hands of terrorists. “There are cheaper, quick and safe alternatives. It is necessary to dilute plutonium and place it in an underground geological storage. Not a single dollar of taxpayers should be spent on MOX technology, ”the statement posted on the UCS website said. The opinion of politicians and physicists may not match.

If the goal of the Kremlin demarche was to make the United States pay attention to the whole complex of claims to America, then the goal was only partially achieved. A significant part of the television debate of candidates for vice presidents was indeed devoted to Putin and politics of Russia, and on the nearly Sunday evening, in the 2nd round, Clinton and Trump, as expected, will return to Syria, hackers and cooperation within the framework of NATO to contain Russia. The second debate will be held in the “answers to questions”: from the hall and from social networks. There we will see how much the Russian topic is really interesting to the American voter.

Russia is again in the headings of the local media, but the calls to fulfill at least one of the requirements “on the list of Putin” in Washington did not sound. However, not even evening and, according to Stratfor experts, nuclear blackmail can be continued.