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On Wednesday, Kommersant reported that Moscow would end its participation in a decades-old program with the USA aimed at dismantling WMDs. The paper reported sources in the US State Department as saying that Russia’s no longer interested in the Nunn-Lugar programme…also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme (CTR)… that dates back to the early 1990’s, which helped decommission scores of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons after the Soviet collapse.
US officials told the paper that their Russian counterparts informed them during a recent meeting that Moscow no longer needed financial assistance, emphasising instead the importance of guarding state secrets. The move is the latest in Moscow’s review of its relationship with Washington, and comes after the Kremlin kicked the USAID out of Russia earlier this month. It also follows comments last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the “reset” policy between Russia and the United States “can’t last forever”.
The CTR program began in 1991, and has had two extensions, in 1999 and 2006. The current terms expires in 2013. According to the CTR website, the USA spent an estimated 8 billion USD on CTR, which included measures to increase safety at nuclear plants in the former USSR and generating alternative work for former institutes and production facilities that had produced WMDs.
10 October 2012
RIA-Novosti
http://en.ria.ru/mlitary_news/20121010/176527879.html
Voices from Russia 
6 July 2013. Sergei Yolkin’s World. Events of the Week in Cartoons: 17-21 June 2013
Tags: arms control, arms limitation treaties, Barack Obama, diplomacy, Moscow International Film Festival, New START, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Russian culture, Russian Railways, Sergei Yolkin, United States, USA, Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Yakunin
Events of the Week in Cartoons: 17-21 June 2013
Sergei Yolkin
2013
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Vladimir Yakunin is the head of Russian Railways and a close crony of VVP. A false (but very plausible-appearing) report surfaced in the media about his resignation, which caused a mini-brouhaha. The “Secret Secret Service”, of course, refers to Yakunin’s bodyguards, who, no doubt, wanted to get their hands on the “server” of the crook news.
BMD
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Sergei Yolkin felt that the main events of the week were the reduction of nuclear weapons, a news report about a letter of resignation from Vladimir Yakunin, and, of course, the Moscow International Film Festival (MMKF).
21 June 2013
Sergei Yolkin
RIA-Novosti
http://ria.ru/caricature/20130621/944913075.html