Putin leaves Kazakhstan without deal to build nuclear plant
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
News
Publish date: October 11, 1997
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
News
The new additional law on state secrets was approved by the Duma on September 19, and undersigned by Boris Yeltsin on October 6. It came to force upon publication on October 9. The law describes what kinds of information that is to be regarded as state secrets from now on. Investigations into possible breaches of the new law will be delegated to the security police FSB.
–The law seems to have been issued as a preparation for the trial against me, says Bellona co-worker Aleksandr Nikitin. After reading the new law-text today, he says that from now on anything pertaining to submarines and radwaste may be regarded as state secrets.
The new law’s article 5 states that all information pertaining to localisation of military equipment, construction, protection and military-political circumstances is secret. In addition, the law stresses that information on military nuclear objects and installations is secret.
The new law may have dramatic consequences for international co-operation on military nuclear waste, long awaited by many. Both Norwegian and US authorities are involved with projects which cover military bases on the Kola Peninsula. If the law is to be complied with, no international participants will get access to information concerning the Northern Fleet’s radwaste or deccomissioning of retired subs.
As opposed to the former law on state secrets, the new text forcibly states that all information on military installations is secret. The old text made provisions for case-by-case evaluations.
Article 26 of the new law even states that expert commissions shall evaluate possible breaches of the law. This is the very kind of commission, put together by the Russian general staff, which on several occasions have evaluated the Bellona report on the Northen Fleet and found it to contain state secrets. The spy charges against Nikitin are based on the conclusions of these expert comitteess. In the charges, references are made to secret decrees, as ‘proof’ of criminal activity. As far as the new law on state secrets provides for the enforcement of secret decrees, it violates the Russian Constitution and internationally acknowlegded principles of justice.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
Russia is formally withdrawing from a landmark environmental agreement that channeled billions in international funding to secure the Soviet nuclear legacy, leaving undone some of the most radioactively dangerous projects and burning one more bridge of potential cooperation with the West.
While Moscow pushes ahead with major oil, gas and mining projects in the Arctic—bringing more pollution to the fragile region—the spoils of these undertakings are sold to fuel Russia’s war economy, Bellona’s Ksenia Vakhrusheva told a side event at the COP 29, now underway in Baku, Azerbaijan.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.