Russia and non-proliferation: A concession that never was

Commentary feature.

In November 2014, Russia announced that it would build two new nuclear plants in Iran, in spite of faltering negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme. Days later, Russia told the United States that it intended to curtail US-Russian efforts to secure nuclear materiel left over from the Soviet Union. Western diplomats have always feared that, at some point, Russia would walk away from non-proliferation efforts if it were to be confronted on other issues of international politics, and ensuring Russian cooperation with the West in this field was one of the major rationales behind engagement with Russia.

However, Western policymakers seem not to have realised that Russia has, in fact, never been cooperative on non-proliferation: it simply hid its proliferation activities behind a diplomatic smokescreen.