June 21, 2015 7:44 pm
One of Vladimir Putin’s most senior officials has warned the US against a plan to store heavy weapons in eastern Europe as Nato draws up contingency plans for conflict in Europe for the first time since the cold war.
Sergei Ivanov, the Russian president’s chief of staff and a former leading figure in the KGB successor FSB, told the FT that deteriorating relations with the US — where “rhetoric has started to go off-scale” — and any drastic move by Nato close to Russia’s borders meant it would concentrate its focus on external threats.
“If the military infrastructure of Nato is greatly strengthened in eastern Europe, or the US starts to really place potent missile defence systems in Romania, Bulgaria or Poland, we will say that the external threat has grown stronger,” Mr Ivanov said in an interview. “I am telling you that honestly in advance. Not everything depends on us, it also depends on you.”
His comments come as Nato this week prepares to grant significant new powers to the alliance’s military chief to deploy troops, a move that currently requires a decision from all 28 Nato allies. Nato is also looking at ways to improve logistics across Europe, for example by striking agreements to use civilian railway companies and having the ability to close down roads and motorways or take over airports.
Officials at the alliance said the new measures were purely defensive but they wanted to speed up Nato’s response to crises. This includes detailed logistical and tactical questions about how Nato would transport thousands of troops, tanks and material to battlefields — issues the alliance has not had to address on its home soil since the cold war.
“We are discussing decision making and we have to find a way to reconcile military efficiency with political control,” Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told the FT.
Mr Ivanov is one of the longest-serving officials in Mr Putin’s administration and has been the president’s close associate since their days in the KGB in the late seventies in their home town of St Petersburg.
A former security council head and defence minister, Mr Ivanov gave cautious praise to recent efforts to revive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, but he revealed deep concern over what he described as a hegemonic, interventionist US.
“That [US secretary of state John] Kerry came to Sochi and met with both the president and foreign minister Lavrov and held long, detailed talks with them in a friendly, normal atmosphere, that’s of course good, ” Mr Ivanov said. But he added that he viewed such initiatives with caution: “It is naive to think about strengthening relations until the conflict in Ukraine is settled.”
He said the US appeared to have understood that the situation in Ukraine was getting out of control. Following Mr Kerry’s visit, Washington has started to become more involved in the diplomacy around the fragile Minsk II ceasefire in agreement.
Ivanov’s path to the top
Jan 31, 1953 Born in Leningrad,
now St Petersburg.
1975 Graduated from St Petersburg State University, studied English and Swedish.
From 1976 Worked at the KGB’s Leningrad region directorate where he met Vladimir Putin.
1984 Second secretary at the Soviet embassy in Helsinki, working under the top KGB official there.
1998 Appointed Mr Putin’s deputy, then head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.
1999 National security adviser to president Boris Yeltsin
2001 Named minister of defence.
2007 First deputy prime minister.
2011 Chief of staff of the presidential administration.
The president’s chief of staff was speaking amid political debate in Moscow over how Mr Putin should use the sky-high public support generated by last year’s annexation of Crimea and his push to restore Russia’s position as a global power.
Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who remains a trusted economic adviser to the president, on Thursday proposed that Mr Putin call early presidential elections to get a strong mandate for economic reforms. A person close to Mr Kudrin said he was keen to replace Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister, but would do so only if he were given a free hand from Mr Putin to implement structural reforms.
Mr Kudrin’s offensive is the most aggressive attempt yet by the economic reformers’ camp to wrest back some influence and to move the political agenda away from sabre-rattling and towards the economy.
In a sign of how fiercely the siloviki bloc is likely to be opposed to early presidential elections, Mr Ivanov dismissed the proposal out of hand, saying he did “not see any sense” in the idea. “Do we have a terrible crisis in our country, a pre-revolutionary situation? Yes, there are economic problems, but such exist in the European Union as well, as they do in the UK, ” Mr Ivanov said.
“I am really looking forward to the [planned] referendum [on the UK’s EU membership] by the way, I am really curious how that will end. I am also curious how the Greece-eurozone crisis will end — we will not have to wait much longer. But in Russia, I don’t see a crisis.”