Russian Environmental Digest (REDfiles) is a compilation of the week's
major English-language press on environmental issues in Russia.
1 - 7 May 2000, Vol. 2, No. 18
1. Putin Signs Law Implementing START-II Nuclear Disarmament Treaty
2. Moscow Rejects US Plan To Revise ABM Treaty
3. Moscow Allows for Exceptional Cases in Nuclear Exports
4. Birthrate Dips in Ex-Communist Countries
5. Russian Nuclear Arsenal at No Risk To "Love Bug," Says Official
6. 30 Percent of Chechnya Is in Zone of Ecological Disaster
7. More Oil Burns Than Is Extracted in Chechnya
8. Ecological Protection Firm Set Up in Chechnya
9. Chernobyl-Type Disaster Ruled Out
10. Air Pollution Appalling in 200 Russian Cities
11. No Incidents at Russia's Nuclear Facilities in 2000
12. Fish With an Indelicate Smell Is Siberian Delicacy
1 Putin Signs Law Implementing START-II Nuclear Disarmament Treaty
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, May 4, 2000
The START-II treaty on the reduction of nuclear arms by Russia and the
United States officially came into effect Thursday after a seven-year
delay.
In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin undersigned the law ratifying the
agreement which halves the nuclear arsenals of both sides.
Washington ratified the treaty in 1996, but it was then blocked in the
Russian parliament by Communist and nationalist forces which regarded
it as undermining the country's defence capability.
The new, more Kremlin-friendly parliament elected in December finally
ratified the treaty last month, followed by the upper chamber of the
legislative, the Federation Council.
Under START-II, Russia will by 2007 reduce its number of warheads to
3,000 and the United States to 3,500.
Moscow has warned it may still disregard the treaty if Washington goes
ahead with plans to deploy a national missile defence shield in breach
of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
But experts say that Russia will be forced to drastically reduce its
nuclear arsenal with or without the treaty since it cannot afford to
maintain existing stockpiles of largely outdated weapons.
The Russian law also makes provisions for a further START-III treaty
on further reductions by 2003. Preliminary talks began last year about
this next possible phase of disarmament. Russian currently has about
6,900 warheads.
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2 Moscow Rejects US Plan To Revise ABM Treaty Agence France Presse,
May 4, 2000
Moscow has rejected new US proposals to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile treaty (ABM) to allow Washington to deploy a nuclear defence
shield, Interfax news agency reported.
"These proposals are not constructive and cannot form the basis for
future discussions about this problem," said General Leonid Ivashov,
head of international cooperation at the Russian defence ministry,
cited by the agency.
"They represent an attempt to tear up the ABM treaty," he added.
US ambassador to Moscow James Collins announced on April 28 that the
United States had presented a draft agreement to Russia on modifying
the ABM treaty that would allow deployment of a limited national
missile defense system.
Moscow considers the treaty to be a cornerstone of Russian defence and
world stability and refuses to allow any changes to the agreement,
which Washington wants to amend to put in place a missile defence
system by 2005.
Russia is threatening to leave the START-I and START-II disarmament
agreements if the United States violates ABM.
The thorny issue is expected to loom large over a summit in Moscow on
June 4 and 5 between US President Bill Clinton and his Russian
counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The United States wants the ABM, which bans construction of missile
shields, changed so it can counter possible attacks from so-called
"rogue states" like North Korea and Iran.
But this argument is "misleading" said General Ivashov, since "it is
very unlikely that these states will have the means in the coming
years to strike the United States with such weapons."
(back to top)
3 Moscow Allows for Exceptional Cases in Nuclear Exports ITAR-TASS
News Agency, May 7, 2000
Russia allows for exports of nuclear materials, equipment and
technologies to countries, which do not have nuclear armaments and
have not put their activity under control of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), but only in exceptional cases and on a number of
conditions.
President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on changes in the
presidential ordinance of March 27, 1992, "On Control over Exports of
Nuclear Materials, Equipment and Technologies from the Russian
Federation.
The decree's text, received by Itar-Tass on Sunday from the
presidential press service, in particular, runs as follows:
"In exceptional cases such exports from the Russian Federation to a
country, which does not have nuclear armaments and has not put all of
its nuclear activity under guarantee of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, can be done on particular resolutions of the Russian
Cabinet under the following conditions:
" -- the supply does not run counter to the international commitments
of the Russian Federation;
" -- the government of the importing country gives official assurances
to exclude the use of supplied materials, equipment and technologies
for works that may result in the creation of a nuclear explosive;
" -- the supply is made exclusively for the safe operation of nuclear
facilities on territory of the importing country;
" -- guarantees of the International Atomic Energy Agency are applied
to the aforesaid facilities.
"The Government of the Russian Federation has the right to set
additional conditions for the exports. "
The President has instructed the Cabinet to bring its normative legal
acts in correspondence to the decree.
(back to top)
4 Birthrate Dips in Ex-Communist Countries New York Times, May 4, 2000
The collapse of Communism in 1989 produced a sharp drop in the
fertility rate throughout Eastern and Central Europe that could reduce
the region's population nearly 20 percent by the year 2050, according
to a United Nations report issued today.
With political collapse and economic uncertainty, many women almost
immediately stopped having children or decided to delay motherhood,
according to the report by the United Nations Economic Commission for
Europe, part of a larger economic survey of Europe.
And in more developed countries, the transition to capitalism has
produced new economic opportunities for both women and men, making
early childbearing less common.
A result will be a smaller labor pool and a quickly aging population,
said Miroslav Macura, the chief of the population unit that prepared
the report. With the rise in emigration and at least temporary
increases in mortality rates in large parts of the region, which
includes Russia and the European parts of the former Soviet Union, he
said, a population of some 307 million could fall to about 250 million
in the next 50 years.
With the fall of Communism, real incomes have declined in the region
and are only slowly recovering, with larger gaps between rich and
poor. At the same time, governments have cut back support for families
with children, while services like day-care centers have become
private or more expensive.
"People have been impoverished and decided that having kids at a time
of poverty and misery is not the right thing to do, so they cut back,"
Mr. Macura said in a telephone interview from Geneva. "This is family
downsizing comparable to company downsizing."
Western Europe is also facing reductions in the fertility rate --
which measures the average number of children born to women of
childbearing age -- and an aging population, which is raising the
prospect of an economy without enough young, skilled workers to grow
and pay for the rising number of pensioners. The answer is likely to
be more immigration from Central and Eastern Europe, which may create
new political problems in Western Europe and further diminish the
skilled work force to the east.
In Eastern and Central Europe, the decline in childbearing is much
sharper than in the West. When a population has a fertility rate of
2.1 children per woman, it replaces itself, Mr. Macura said. But by
1997, the average fertility rate in the transition economies was 1.37,
a third lower than in 1988. In the market economies of Western Europe,
by contrast, the average rate was 1.58.
The rate fell most sharply after 1989 in the former East Germany,
where in 1993 the rate had dropped to 0.76. By 1998, it had improved
to 1.06, rising to a figure still smaller than both Latvia and
Bulgaria, whose rates had fallen to 1.09 and 1.11 respectively. The
more prosperous countries of Central Europe will make up some of their
population decrease from new immigration that will come from even
poorer countries to their east, suggested Tomas Kucera, a professor of
demographics at Charles University in Prague.
He also said that the large generation born in the early 1970's, which
is currently postponing motherhood, is likely not to postpone it
forever, especially as economies stabilize. But they will have fewer
children, often no more than one.
"Fertility will never again reach pre-1989 levels," Mr. Kucera said.
Given the high levels of unemployment and underemployment in Central
and Eastern Europe, having fewer children is "rational economic
behavior in some ways," Mr. Macura said. He suggests that in Russia
and many of the poorer states, a smaller labor force will help. But he
concedes that paying for the benefits and illnesses of an aging
population will be difficult, and that some countries, like Russia,
will see a sharp decline in its population as a strategic threat to
its influence and power.
Still, despite Russia's high mortality rate, women are still having
babies early in Russia, as well as in Ukraine and Belarus, Mr. Macura
said. The United Nations study projects Russia's population to decline
by 18 percent in the next 50 years, but the drop is relatively small
in percentage terms compared with Hungary, 25 percent; Bulgaria and
Latvia, both 31 percent; and Estonia, 34 percent.
(back to top)
5 Russian Nuclear Arsenal at No Risk To "Love Bug," Says Official
Agence France Presse, May 6, 2000
Russia's nuclear arsenal is in no danger of contracting the "love bug"
an official said Saturday, the day after Washington admitted four
Pentagon computers had been hit by the virus.
Computers controlling thousands of ballistic warheads were protected
from the "ILOVEYOU" virus by sturdy in-built defences, Ilshat
Baichurin, spokesman for Russia's nuclear rocket force, told the
ITAR-TASS news agency.
Russia's defence systems would "remain inaccessible from the outside
for the next 150 years," he added.
On Friday, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said three classified
internal e-mail systems were contaminated by the love bug, and another
classified system also was infected.
Military operations were not hurt by the attack, he said.
Carried in e-mail with a cybermessage that reads "ILOVEYOU" the virus
is activated when the recipient opens an attached "love letter."
(back to top)
6 30 Percent of Chechnya Is in Zone of Ecological Disaster ITAR-TASS
News Agency, May 6, 2000
The greater part of the Chechen territory is stricken with ecological
diseases to various extent, while 30 percent, including Grozny, is in
the zone of ecological disaster, Itar-Tass learnt on Saturday from
official of the ecological service of the Russian Defence Ministry
Vyacheslav Nikiforov.
"All actions in Chechnya, taking place in the economic sphere over the
past few years, are comparable with ecological terrorism," he noted.
In Nikiforov's opinion, the economic system which existed in the
republic up to the last time and "based on criminal use of natural
resources" left disastrous ecological heritage to the Chechen
republic.
According to Nikiforov, home-made mini-refineries producing
petroproducts whose number was at least 1,500 till last August,
inflicted the greatest damage on the environment. A considerable part
of home-made installations were destroyed by mobile squads of the
Russian Interior Ministry, but quite a number of mini-refineries are
still operating.
Military ecologists corroborated their statements on Saturday during
an overflight of Chechen lowlands by a helicopter. According to the
press centre of the United Army Group, 39 such illegal installations
were destroyed on Friday.
The scale of ecological problems has become even more evident with the
advent of spring, Nikiforov claimed. According to the ecology
official, this is connected with the fact that waste of
mini-refineries, amounting to 70 percent of the total volume of oil
taken for refining, gets into the Terek, Sunzha, Argun and Belka
rivers in the form of numerous oil slicks and threatens to upset the
ecological balance in the Caspian.
According to estimates of military ecologists, the total contaminated
area in Chechnya from the operation of underground mini-refineries can
amount to 1,500 and more hectares, while the content of toxic
substances in soil and water tops concentration ceilings by 10-20
times. The depth of their penetration into soil tops two meters.
Nikiforov noted that the exact size of damage, inflicted on Chechnya
by ecological terrorism, will be calculated over the next few months.
In the official's words, this work is done in the framework of a
decision, taken by the Russian government on April 15.
The decision determines top priority measures to locate a source of
contamination and rehabilitation of contaminated areas of Chechnya. It
is planned to use more than 60 million roubles for its first stage in
2000.
(back to top)
7 More Oil Burns Than Is Extracted in Chechnya British Broadcasting
Corporation, May 05, 2000
Every month 170,000 tonnes of oil (equivalent to 2m tonnes a year)
burn at Chechnya's neglected oil wells. That is 10 times more than the
rate of extraction, Russian Deputy Fuel and Energy Minister Valeriy
Garipov told an international conference in Moscow titled "Russia and
the Environment - extraction, transportation and refining of oil".
There are 26 oil wells on fire in Chechnya. Some of the incidents that
have taken place are "very serious", Garipov said, and there have been
attempts to reignite some wells after they have been extinguished.
The problem is, he said, that "nobody pays". The bill for restoring
the oil industry in the republic is being picked up exclusively by the
Rosneft company. Senior officials at the Fuel and Energy Ministry have
been personally charged with reviving Chechnya's oil sector and the
ministry has made this one of its top priorities, Garipov stressed.
(back to top)
8 Ecological Protection Firm Set Up in Chechnya British Broadcasting
Corporation, May 05, 2000
The state-owned enterprise Ecotech has been created in Chechnya. It is
going to remove from the subsoil the harmful substances, accumulated
there as a result of technogenic processes.
Some 2m tonnes of oil products have been accumulated in the subsoil of
Groznyy area alone as a result of leakages of oil products from
storages and pipelines, which lasted for many years, a spokesman for
the staff of Sergey Yastrzhembskiy, assistant to the Russian
president, told ITAR-TASS on Thursday [27th April].
Major General Boris Alekseyev, head of the ecological security service
of the Russian Armed Forces, believes, that the worst damage was
inflicted on the natural environment of Chechnya between 1992 and
1999. That was the time of control-free, barbaric use of the natural
resources of the republic.
During the Dudayev rule, which was a period of absolute lawlessness,
oil began to be refined at privately owned mini-refineries. There were
some 15,000 of them. The mini-refineries, built by the gangsters
illegally, without any idea of technical norms and standards,
functioned without any control whatsoever, contaminating the natural
environment. As a result of it, one-third of the Chechen territory
became a zone of ecological disaster and another 40 per cent fell
under the category of a zone with an especially unfavourable
ecological situation.
Military ecologists are doing the monitoring of the natural
environment in the republic, using special military planes. "Our
specialists are taking part in working out the technology of the
elimination of contamination hotbeds. It is thanks to the action taken
by the Joint Army Group in the Northern Caucasus, that an ecological
catastrophe has been prevented in the region," General Alekseyev said.
In the opinion of specialists, there is a possibility that the
situation will be improved. The needed research has been done, the
technologies are being mastered, which will help extract from the
subsoil the oil products accumulated there and process them into fuel
and lubricating materials. This work will be done by Ecotech, created
in the republic on the order of the Russian government.
(back to top)
9 Chernobyl-Type Disaster Ruled Out British Broadcasting Corporation,
May 05, 2000
Moscow, 24th April: A nuclear disaster similar to the Chernobyl
tragedy is absolutely impossible in Russia today, Deputy Atomic Energy
Minister Bulat Nigmatulin told a Monday [24th April] briefing in
Moscow.
Russia has made significant changes in RBMK reactors since the
Chernobyl accident, Nigmatulin said. "Nuclear specialists are
absolutely sure that such a situation will not recur," he said.
He pointed to the crucial role of the human factor in the Chernobyl
accident, which caused errors in the operation of the power plant.
Since Chernobyl, Russia has started paying more attention to the human
factor and regularly holding training sessions on the simulators they
now have, he said. The personnel of nuclear power plants also rehearse
actions to be taken in possible emergencies.
(back to top)
10 Air Pollution Appalling in 200 Russian Cities ITAR-TASS News
Agency, May 4, 2000
The level of air pollution in more than 200 Russian cities is above
the country's sanitary permissible standards, Russia's First
Vice-Premier Mikhail Kasyanov told the Cabinet meeting on Thursday.
The Cabinet was discussing measures to improve environmental
protection in the country.
The Constitution of Russia "demands that the government take urgent
measures to ensure the citizens' right to environmental security,"
said Kasyanov who chaired the meeting in the absence of
President-elect and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The government information administration told journalists that the
State Environmental Protection Committee, which had prepared all the
necessary materials for the Cabinet meeting, suggested that the
ensuring of the ecological security of the population and the national
economic sites is the most important task of the environmental policy
in Russia.
Taking into account the specifics of the accomplishment of this task,
the State Environmental Protection Committee found it advisable to
work out an ecological security concept to be endorsed by the
president. The document is to set tasks not only to the government
agencies operating in the environmental protection sector but also to
the law enforcement agencies, economic ministries and departments
charging them with the attainment of required conditions for the
sustainable functioning of the socio-economic sphere and the averting
environmental threats to the country's population and economy.
(back to top)
11 No Incidents at Russia's Nuclear Facilities in 2000 ITAR-TASS News
Agency, May 3, 2000
There were no incidents at Russia's nuclear facilities this year which
would impair their safety, the press service of the State Nuclear
Inspection told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
Automatic isolation systems were triggered two times at Bilibino and
Leningradskaya nuclear power plants by malfunctions. Safety systems of
research reactors were activated nine times.
Two of the alarms were caused by errors of the personnel of
Dmitrovograd's Research Institute of Nuclear Reactors and three by
voltage fluctuations at Saint Petersburg's Institute of Nuclear
Physics.
Four other localised shutdowns were set off by malfunctions of
equipment at Dubna's Institute of Nuclear Research and at Obninsk's
Physics and Energy Institute.
A minor radionuclide leakage was registered at the Siberian Chemical
Combine on April 4 as a furnace was tested without being loaded with
nuclear material. No atmospheric radionuclide emission occurred, and
three workers in the room wore the radioprotective gear.
(back to top)
12 Fish With an Indelicate Smell Is Siberian Delicacy New York Times,
May 2, 2000
Istvyanka, Russia -- Almost any resident of this village can tick off
the seemingly endless string of superlatives about the great lake --
inland sea, really -- that laps insistently against the town docks.
Lake Baikal is the biggest, the oldest, by far the deepest, the
clearest lake on earth.
Were it empty, all of the world's rivers would have to flow for an
entire year to fill it. It has more than 1,500 plants and animals
found nowhere else, including the world's only purely freshwater seal.
But press a resident to say what he loves most about Baikal, and he
may cast his lot with the nondescript, gray, oily, foot-long fish that
dwells therein.
Siberians love the lowly omul. They love it fried, dried, smoked,
baked, grilled, salted, stuffed, with internals and without internals,
with and without scales. Residents of the eastern shore even like it
slightly decayed -- "with odor," they call it.
In warm weather, which is to say above freezing, they sell it from
dozens of roadside stands along the shore, their portable cookers
belching the smoke of burning alder, with rows of cured fish on the
tables waiting to be wrapped in newspaper and carried away.
"The stands are a relatively new thing," said one 31-year-old
omul-hawker, who would identify himself only as Mikhail. "In Soviet
times you could hardly find any fish. The rumor was always that the
catch went under a contract to Czechoslovakia."
"Some days we sell a hundred, some days 10," he added. "It depends on
the weather."
Life has not been kind to the little fish, a distant cousin of the
lake herring that inhabits the Great Lakes. Experts at the Russian
Academy of Science's Institute of Limnology -- limnology is the study
of lakes -- say the population has risen and fallen in tandem with
wars, famines and other events that forced people to turn to this
reliable food supply.
In the 1960's fishermen took so many omul that netting them was
briefly banned. When a hydroelectric dam was built on the Angara
River, Baikal's only outlet, the lake rose, causing a change in water
temperature that led to a drastic decline in the fry that are the
omul's main meal. One result has been a smaller and, presumably,
hungrier omul than in past decades.
Still, it remains the lake's most abundant fish. Up to 150,000 tons of
omul live there, although the numbers are said to have declined in
recent years, and the government limits the annual take to 10,000
tons.
Served in a decent restaurant, the omul's abundant, light gray meat
tastes not unlike flounder, bland and only slightly fishy. Smoked, it
acquires an almost sweet flavor.
But to an outsider the omul's main selling point seems to be not taste
but price. Just about any stand will sell one, smoked until its
cellophane-thin skin turns golden, for between 7 and 15 rubles --
about 25 to 50 cents -- depending on its size.
The wharf at Listvyanka, the main stopping point for travelers from
the nearby big cities of Irkutsk and Angarsk, is prime territory for
the omul merchants, and it appears to be flourishing. On the steep
hill behind the shore, steam baths and vacation homes have sprung up
with spectacular views of the snowcapped Khamar-Daban mountains to the
east, across 30 miles of water.
The dozen or so omul sellers who have set up their smokers and tables
on the wharf said they were increasingly visited by German, Japanese
and American tourists. But one day recently, a cold wind blew in off
the ice-covered lake and customers were few and far between, so they
entertained a visitor with some of the more exotic omul recipes.
There is raw salted omul: the fish is placed in a pile of salt, organs
intact, and left for 12 hours before being washed and eaten. And there
is pressed omul, in which layers of salt and gutted omul are
alternated, lasagna-style. There is hot-smoked omul, roasted for 40
minutes, and cold-smoked omul, bathed in cool alder smoke for three
days. Lightly salted and dried -- its innards are pried open and
exposed to the air with tiny matchstick-size crossbeams -- "you can
take it anywhere," one merchant said. "It will last forever."
Although the overwhelming preference is for gutted fish, some
customers prefer hot-smoked omul with the organs intact, and they
generally wolf it down, scales and all.
"They like it with organs because it's juicier that way," said Yana
Borodina, 23, who tended one table.
And finally, there is omul "s dushkom" -- with odor -- the delicacy of
Baikal's mountainous eastern shore and a traditional dish of the
Buryat, the Mongol-related people who live there.
The recipe is fairly simple: catch an omul, place it in warm sunlight
until it begins to smell -- generally 10 to 20 minutes -- and eat it,
scales, organs and all. "Each according to his taste," a grimacing Ms.
Borodina said, then told a joke: it seems that a man from the east
went into a market and asked the owner, "Is the fish fresh?"
"Of course," the owner said. "In that case," the man replied, "I'll go
somewhere else."
(back to top)
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