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Putin Shifts Bureaucracy Again; Atomic Energy Agency to Gain Status
Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
May 21, 2004

WASHINGTON — Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday transferred the governmental agency responsible for overseeing Russia’s nuclear efforts from the newly created Industry and Energy Ministry to the prime minister’s office, according to the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (see GSN, May 20).

Putin in March initiated a massive government restructuring project, which resulted in the dissolution of about half of Russia’s Cabinet-level ministries. Among the ministries affected was the Atomic Energy Ministry, which was transformed into the Federal Atomic Energy Agency and placed under the auspices of a new Industry and Energy Ministry. The agency, headed by former Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev, has broad oversight of both Russia’s civilian and military nuclear programs.

In a decree signed yesterday, though, Putin transferred the atomic energy agency to the direct supervision of the Russian government. According to RANSAC, the change would probably result in the agency reporting directly to Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov’s office.

Many of operational details of the agency’s new place within the Russian government remain unclear.

The transfer represents a “very important correction,” Rose Gottemoeller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Global Security Newswire. She said today that the agency might have lacked necessary authority to negotiate international agreements, such as those related to nonproliferation, had it remained within the Industry and Energy Ministry.

The transfer also represents “a great victory” for Rumyantsev himself, as he is likely to receive greater authority through the move, Gottemoeller added.

Yesterday’s decree also again transfers within the government the Federal Service for Atomic Inspection, which monitors security at Russian nuclear facilities and research reactors and oversees the accounting, control and physical protection of nuclear materials. Under the new structure, the inspection service has moved from the Industry and Energy Ministry to be combined with the Federal Service for Technological Oversight to create the new Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Atomic Inspection. This new service would also report directly to the prime minister’s office, according to RANSAC.

According to RANSAC, the new Federal Industry Ministry, which assumed responsibility for Russia’s biological and chemical weapons destruction efforts upon the elimination of the Russian Munitions Agency, would remain within the Industry and Energy Ministry. Experts have said that the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Alyoshin to head the industry agency could increase its prominence within the ministry.