Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 24 – Moscow officials
used the August 8 accident in Severodvinsk which saw the release of a significant
amount of radiation as the occasion to shut down most of the nuclear test
monitoring sites it maintains with foreign assistance across Russia. “This was
no accident,” experts say.
After the accident, Moscow did what it
could to conceal “the true extent” of the accident, they tell Deutsche Welle;
and their suspicions about Moscow’s actions were only intensified this past
week when it was discovered that “five control stations of the international
system of monitoring nuclear tests in Russia have ceased to work” (dw.com/ru/взрыв-в-северодвинске-кремль-скрывает-не-радиацию-а-технологию/a-50121717).
Initially,
Russian officials said there were only problems with communications between
these statins and the Vienna headquarters of the body that monitors fulfillment
of ban on nuclear tests. Then, these officials said any information from Russian
sites was being supplied on a “completely voluntary” basis.
But
Western experts in Vienna and elsewhere say that closing these monitoring sites
means that outsiders have less information about the extent of the spread of radiation
from Severodvinsk, an indication that the August 8 accident was far worse than Moscow
has been willing to acknowledge.
They
say such a conclusion is all the more likely given that the Russian government
did not stop reporting from the two additional Russian monitoring sites in the
Far East, a region thousands of miles from Severodvinsk and one to which radiation
from the accident there is unlikely to have spread.
What
makes this latest Russian action especially unfortunate, Deutsche Welle says,
is that it is a clear violation of an agreement Moscow has signed, it limits the
world’s ability to monitor developments in North Korea and Iran, and it has
occurred at places the Russian site is receiving international financing to
operate.
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