Were the Russians forewarned by North Korea of its impending test? Particularly, did they know telling details like the size of the device that Kim Jong Il’s regime set off?
There is evidence to suggest they did. But they apparently didn’t know enough to keep quiet about it when the test, practically speaking, fizzled. Nor, converesly, did they choose to share what they knew with their good friend, America. In spite of President Bush’s assessment of his relationship with Mr. Putin,
And the more I get to know President Putin, the more I get to see his heart and soul, and the more I know we can work together in a positive way. White House News
it appears that five years into their “special friendship,” Mr. Putin doesn’t hold Mr. Bush in the same regard.
How the Russians may have known is a question whose answer can only be purely speculation. And it’s just as likely that China may have been aware of the same information known to the Russians.
Recall, it was Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergi Ivanov, who said the Moscow Government believed the strength of the NK weapon was between 5-15 kilotons on October 9, 2006, the day after the test. And as of Wednesday, October 11, 2006:
Only Russia has said the evidence available confirms a nuclear blast actually occurred.
What that evidence is has never been clarified exactly. Threat’s Watch.org does a nice bit of analysis on this part of Ivan Oelrich’s post on the Strategic Security Blog concerning Russia’s characterization:
There was early confusion about how large the explosion actually was, with U.S., French, and South Korean seismologists reporting a yield equivalent to about 500 tons of high explosive, that is half a kiloton, while the Russians reported that the yield was in the range of 10 to 15 kilotons, or twenty to thirty times larger. From the beginning, the source of this huge discrepancy was difficult to understand. Soon, the Russian seismic data were released and it became clear that even their own data did not support the Russian claim. Federation of American Scientists
The key question is: Did the Russians knowingly release an estimation of bomb size, even though their own — and the rest of the monitoring world’s — seismic data could not support that estimate. It looks like they did. Russia’s ambassador to the UN was first out of the blocks objecting to US sanctions proposals against NK.
Mr. Churkin said Hе had аsked Mr. Boltоn on Thursday [Oct. 12, 2006] morning not tо call for a vote, “but what happened, happened.” Forex News
but China was less vehment, when it
. . .sent an emissary tо thе White House, Tang Jiaхuan, who met with President Bush during thе day and appeared tо bе walking a line bеtween punishing North Korea and preventing thе United States from taking meаsures thаt would seriously threaten thе government, according tо thе deputy national security adviser, J. D. Crouch.
The explosion occurred Sunday, October 8, 2006 around 10:36 PM EST — 11:36 AM Monday in Korea.
That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away. NYT
Russia has not reported receiving a similar call, in spite of being, like China, North Korea’s abutting neighbor and historically sharing a Stalinist government.
Yet, it is the Russians who seem to be the first — and only? — who are talking to the North Koreans face-to-face over their nuclear test.
A Russian nuclear envoy who visited North Korea said Saturday he pressed the North to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev said he had a “very useful” meeting Friday [October 13, 2006] with Kim Gye Gwan, the North’s nuclear negotiator, but did not say how Kim responded. Lycos News
Useful to whom? Presumably to Russia.
While China’s objections to the now in place sanctions agaist NK have largely been economic ones,
Liu Jianchao, a senior Foreign Ministry official of China, Pyongyang’s strongest ally, said Thursday that. . .it would not cut off economic assistance to Pyongyang. “China’s economic assistance to North Korea is improving the living standards of its people,” Jianchao said. Novosti
Russia, who also opposed the stiffer sanction proposal, has not iterated the reasons for objecting to the current proposal over which it has expressed some dissatisfaction.
If the Russians are “running interference” for NK’s nuclear program, like they’re doing for Iran’s, the question also remains — why?.
What we do know is this. The North Korean bomb is a plutonium device (unlike the uranium program of Iran and Pakistan), like India’s program. Plutonium is easier to produce than enriched bomb-grade uranium but highly toxic and of far greater threat to the environment. And, while small, Russia does share a common border with their crazy neighbor to the south. Enough to have them worried about the potential hazard?
Finally,
North Korea maintains uranium mines with an estimated four million tons of exploitable high-quality uranium ore.
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[NK has] trained specialists from students who had studied in the Soviet Union. Under the cooperation agreement concluded between the USSR and the DPRK, a nuclear research center was constructed near the small town of Yongbyon.
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Estimates vary of both the amount of plutonium in North Korea’s possession and number of nuclear weapons that could be manufactured from the material. South Korean, Japanese, and Russian intelligence estimates of the amount of plutonium separated, for example, are reported to be higher — 7 to 22 kilograms, 16 to 24 kilograms, and 20 kilograms, respectively — than the reported US estimate of about 12 kilograms.
<snip>
the amount of plutonium needed [to make a nuclear bomb is] 4 kilograms*. . .enough to make up to three bombs if the US estimate is used and up to six bombs if the other estimates are used. FAS on WMD
*Or, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1-3 kg., depending on the size weapon wanted and the technological skill of the manufacturer. Difficulty is indirectly proportional to yield.
After reading the above, one can hardly help speculating that Russia may have a well placed intelligence conduit in the NK nuclear program. They may know, better than anyone else, how many bombs NK is capable of producing, once they get their design right. Useful information they may wish to keep to themselves.
To the rest of the world it only appears that NK may have wasted one, or a portion of one.
