Russia announced Friday it will begin the startup next week of Iran’s only atomic power plant, giving Tehran a boost as it struggles with international sanctions and highlighting differences between Moscow and Washington over pressuring the Islamic Republic to give up activities that could be used to make nuclear arms.
Uranium fuel shipped by Russia will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Aug. 21, beginning a process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities, Russian and Iranian officials said.
“From that moment, the Bushehr plant will be officially considered a nuclear energy installation,” said Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency.
Outside the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery in eastern Moscow, Muscovites hawking books and trinkets are still in shock from the scorching heat and choking smog that filled the Russian capital and made it hell on earth for nearly a week.
“People couldn’t breathe,” said one. “The authorities did nothing,” said Nadezhda, a pensioner selling flowers.
Inside the cemetery gates, gravediggers are taking respite from a surge in funerals that first grew as temperatures reached record levels and then climbed, as toxic smog from forest and peat bog fires shrouded the city. Death rates doubled in recent days, according to a senior Moscow health official, as the elderly and those suffering from bronchial and heart problems were hit.
A 12th Russian spy acting inside the US worked at Microsoft before his arrest and deportation, suggesting that he and the other Kremlin agents apprehended in the country were seeking inside information on technology as well as personal contacts.
Before Alexey Karetnikov, 23, was picked up for immigration law violations on June 28 he had tested codes at the world’s biggest software company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft confirmed on Wednesday.
Mr Karetnikov, who was deported on Tuesday, had only been in the junior-level job nine months, and like other spies arrested at the same time apparently collected nothing that would damage US security.
Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence investigators have been investigating the 23-year-old Russian man since last fall when his name surfaced in a decade-long espionage investigation, the official said.
It’s unclear what drew investigators’ interest in the 12th man, but FBI agents began monitoring him shortly after he entered the U.S. in October 2009, the official said.
However, investigators weren’t able to gather enough evidence against him to bring charges and came to believe his case was different from that of the others who ended up being charged the spy ring, the U.S. official said. It’s not clear whether he had the training of the others arrested.
Instead of being charged, the man was in federal custody Monday in the process of being deported, the U.S. official said. His location wasn’t disclosed.
In a perfectly choreographed operation, Russia and the United States completed their biggest spy swap since the Cold War Friday, exchanging 10 agents deported by the US for four freed by Moscow.
As the cloak-and-dagger move successfully drew the curtain on what could have fuelled an embarrassing diplomatic spat between the two nations, more details began to emerge highlighting the high-stakes involved.
Special Russian and US flights carried the spies to Vienna early Friday, parked next to each other on the runway, then took off within 15 minutes of each other after the exchange, which was kept well hidden from banks of media.
A government jet carrying the 10 Russian spies, including the glamorous Anna Chapman, took them back to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, officials said.
Ten people pleaded guilty Thursday to working in the U.S. as Russian secret agents, setting up what is expected to be the largest Russia-U.S. spy swap since the Cold War.
Russia agreed give up four prisoners to the U.S. in exchange for the 10 U.S. defendants, who entered their pleas in a Manhattan courtroom, according to a Department of Justice letter.
A U.S. official says the four had to sign oath admitting guilt, before being released, but Russian news reports say the Russian president has pardoned the spies involved with the swap.
In a rapidly arranged spy swap reminiscent of Cold War intrigues, the U.S. government on Thursday agreed to expel 10 agents who had burrowed into American society and in return won the release of four Russians jailed for illegal contacts with the West.
The spies pleaded guilty to acting as unregistered foreign agents for Russia, a charge well short of espionage. They had endured only a few days of jail time since their arrests in the United States last month; in prior cases, spies spent years behind bars before being exchanged.
U.S. officials said there was no point in holding the agents, since authorities had monitored their activities for years and had unraveled their network. Obama administration officials said they had been eager to win the release of the four Russians, some of whom have spent long stretches in prison and are in poor health.
Obama administration officials say the arrest of 11 people accused of being part of a Russian spy ring is a mere bump in the road to better relations with America’s former Cold War foe.
The White House and the State Department both downplayed the implications of the blockbuster investigation, which revealed an elaborate Russian intelligence plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that President Obama had been briefed a “number of times” before the arrests and was “fully and appropriately informed” of the investigation.
He said Obama knew about it even before he took Russian President Dmitry Medvedev out to a Virginia burger joint last Thursday.
A statement by the Russian foreign ministry official on Tuesday said of the allegations: “In our opinion, such actions are groundless and pursue unseemly aims.”
It added: “In any case, it is highly deplorable that all of this is happening against the background of the reset in Russia-US ties announced by the US administration itself.”
The ministry later said that some of those arrested in the US included Russian citizens, but insisted they had done nothing to hurt US interests.
A statement said Moscow wanted the US to show “proper understanding” taking into account the “positive character” of US-Russian relations.
Ten people have been arrested for allegedly serving as secret agents of the Russian government in the United States, the Justice Department said Monday.
Eight of 10 were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments in the United States on behalf of Russia.
Two others were arrested for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States.
Their job, according to the court papers in the case, was “to search and develop ties in policymaking circles” in the United States.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, said Moscow was bidding to help lead efforts to build a new world economic order after the old system collapsed in the global financial crisis.
Opening Russia’s annual economic forum in St Petersburg where hundreds of global chief executives have flocked, Mr Medvedev said the renewed interest in Russia this year was a sign of a changing world in which the institutions of the western-dominated world order had had their day amid thousands of corporate defaults and the threat of sovereign defaults.
Copies of ‘Putin. The Results. 10 Years on’, written by opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov were “intended for participants of the forum”, starting Thursday, according to Olga Kurnosova, head of the city’s branch of the opposition United Civic Front, said.
The reasons for the seizure “are not very clear”, she said.
The book, which has a total print-run of one million copies, aims to “tell the truth about the real results of the leadership of Putin and the tandem”, Mr Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, wrote in his blog on Monday.
The Obama administration is secretly working with Russia to conclude an agreement that many officials fear will limit U.S. missile defenses, a key objective of Moscow since it opposed plans for a U.S. missile defense interceptor base in Eastern Europe, according to American officials involved in arms control issues.
According to the officials, the administration last month presented a draft agreement on missile defenses to the Russians as part of talks between Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov.
The secret talks and possible agreement have triggered alarm among pro-missile defense advocates who are concerned that the administration, in its effort to “reset” ties with Moscow, will make further concessions constraining current and future missile defenses.
The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well?
Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here?
The idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback — on Wednesday, the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck.
“Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” Matt Simmons, a Houston energy expert and investment banker, told Bloomberg News on Friday, attributing the nuclear idea to “all the best scientists.”
