Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
11/14/2014
Russia is planning to cut back on nuclear security cooperation with the United States, the head of Moscow’s state-run nuclear company has reportedly told Obama Administration officials, the New York Times reported this week. Sergey Kirienko reportedly told U.S. officials that new nuclear security work is not “envisioned” in 2015. Such a decision by Russia would curtail more than two decades of cooperation between the two countries since the end of the Cold War. Under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, the U.S. poured billions of dollars into upgrading nuclear security at facilities across Russia and dismantling retired weapons systems, but the umbrella agreement governing Nunn-Lugar was revamped in recent years and scaled back, with Russia’s Ministry of Defense not included in the agreement.
Nuclear security work with Russia has continued even as tensions between the countries have increased over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and U.S. allegations that Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. However, the United States earlier this year cancelled a nuclear cooperation agreement that would have led to information sharing between U.S. and Russian laboratories as relations between the countries grew icier. And earlier this month, Russia announced that it was boycotting the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. The New York Times reported that Russia was still willing to cooperate on nuclear security projects in other countries.
