5 ms·

This was around the same time of the sinking of MS Estonia -- hold your downvotes -- which has been shown, through inspection of the cargo and shipping logs wit

This was around the same time of the sinking of MS Estonia -- hold your downvotes -- which has been shown, through inspection of the cargo and shipping logs with the Estonian authorities, to have been transporting Soviet military vehicles carrying military materials. I'm wondering if the efforts here to remove nuclear material are somehow related, and if the story in this article is 100% true to the facts. At least I find it strange that Russia would happily see the material handed off like that, and I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia.

tapland 5y ago
Estonia is still a hot topic and new dives to the wreck always bring new calls for more thorough investigations. It's worth the time to look into if you like speculation around the fall of the Soviet union and political cover ups.
thriftwy 5y ago
In 1994 Russia was a complete mess and it did not even have a functioning secret service (KGB vanished into thin air and FSB was not created yet). Even if it wanted to interfere it couldn't. It spent time surrendering to separatists in Khasavurt. The more interesting question than the 600 kilograms of Uranium is why Russia did not have a KGB-descendant and where all of the materials collected by the central Soviet KGB went.
- varjag 5y ago
  No, KGB was not disrupted at any point. FSB's predecessor name after KGB was FSK. All three run by same people sitting in the same offices.
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    FSK was created in late December, 1993. As it name implies, it started with counter-intelligence. And the fun thing is, it was not created by "the same people who ran Soviet KGB", but by the Ukrainian intelligence officer who previously converted KGB of Ukrainian SSR to SNBU (Ukraine's secret service). The conversion of Ukraine KGB to SNBU and later to SBU was straightforward and happened on the spot, but the creation of FSK/FSB was happening much later, in multiple stages and they did seem to inherit only minor pieces of KGB. Source: https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 - I did not verify these claims but they do seem interesting.
    - varjag 5y ago
      It hasn't "started" as anything, it was literally same people in same Lubyanka offices.
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        Have you read the article? It explicitly claims that 14 of the 15 top Lubyanka officers ceased working with secret services and exited the field. So it was new people with different background who got ahold of these offices after a long 1991-1995 leave. Maybe they did rehire some of rank-and-file agents. Eventually.
        varjag 5y ago
        No, I don't have time for conspiracist crap: there's way too much of it and mental health is finite resource. The event were contemporary to me and I still have a sound memory. Do you really think KGB had 15 operatives? You seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Cheka has never lost the continuity, that's the major problem of Russia right now.
        thriftwy 5y ago
        These are KGB's top brass and not just some agents. I am saying that KGB ceased to be in 1991 and FSB was created in late 1993. You are saying it is a conspiracy theory, because "because".
        varjag 5y ago
        It did not cease to exist just because a few apparatchiks were shuffled. Bortnikov has started his career in KGB, continued through FSK and is now the head og FSB. Perfect continuity. Patrushev, the previous head of FSB before getting appointed to the Security Council also started as a KGB officer, continued in FSK until it was reformed into FSB. Thousands upon thousands of lower ranks also continued working in the same organization, same offices, park on the same lots and refer to themselves as Chekists. To this day.
  - starwind 5y ago
    I remember reading a chapter about the Russian internal security forces between the fall of the Soviet Union and 2005 and it kind of made my head spin. In a nutshell—the KGB was dissolved into like 3 organizations and over the next few years it was re-consolidated into the FSB, albeit with more control from the president (Putin)
somat 5y ago
"I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia." My knowledge of the event is solely based on the article. but it does specifically mention that the us wanted and asked russia to take the material but russia did not want it. I know that at this time the us was buying a lot of fissibles from russia as well. I think the theory was that 1. it would inject money into russia which was broke and 2 it would remove the fissables from ending up on the open market. win-win. Honestly I would love to read a good in depth history of the breakup of the soviet-union. I don't really understand what happened at all.
- walnutclosefarm 5y ago
  Collapse, The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok is an excellent political and economic history of the end of the Soviet Union. It isn't long on technical details of the kind the posted article refers to, but covers the personalities, goals, strategies in the political and economic areas very thoroughly (and is unsparing of both the leadership and actors in the former Soviet Union, the Eastern European nations, and the West).
gumby 5y ago
> I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia. I remember the events in the article (denuclearization of Ukraine,and other; Kazakhstan’s radioactive being sold to US) as they appeared in the contemporaneous news. Setting things up as described in the article may have been low key but in the end the process was public. Russia had enough going on at the time.
qiskit 5y ago
> At least I find it strange that Russia would happily see the material handed off like that, and I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia. Why would you be surprised? Russia in the 90s was facing far more pressing problems than military equipment and even nuclear material. I remember reading that we actually paid russia and former soviet nations to keep their nuclear materials secure since much of the former soviet union was in a state of economic collapse in the 90s.
- starwind 5y ago
  This was Nunn-Lugar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperative_Threat_Reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperative... The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) traces its history to this legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Threat_Reduction_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Threat_Reduction_Agenc...

tapland 5y ago

Estonia is still a hot topic and new dives to the wreck always bring new calls for more thorough investigations. It's worth the time to look into if you like speculation around the fall of the Soviet union and political cover ups.

thriftwy 5y ago

In 1994 Russia was a complete mess and it did not even have a functioning secret service (KGB vanished into thin air and FSB was not created yet). Even if it wanted to interfere it couldn't. It spent time surrendering to separatists in Khasavurt. The more interesting question than the 600 kilograms of Uranium is why Russia did not have a KGB-descendant and where all of the materials collected by the central Soviet KGB went.

varjag 5y ago
No, KGB was not disrupted at any point. FSB's predecessor name after KGB was FSK. All three run by same people sitting in the same offices.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  FSK was created in late December, 1993. As it name implies, it started with counter-intelligence. And the fun thing is, it was not created by "the same people who ran Soviet KGB", but by the Ukrainian intelligence officer who previously converted KGB of Ukrainian SSR to SNBU (Ukraine's secret service). The conversion of Ukraine KGB to SNBU and later to SBU was straightforward and happened on the spot, but the creation of FSK/FSB was happening much later, in multiple stages and they did seem to inherit only minor pieces of KGB. Source: https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 https://telegra.ph/SBU-protiv-FSB-08-12 - I did not verify these claims but they do seem interesting.
  - varjag 5y ago
    It hasn't "started" as anything, it was literally same people in same Lubyanka offices.
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      Have you read the article? It explicitly claims that 14 of the 15 top Lubyanka officers ceased working with secret services and exited the field. So it was new people with different background who got ahold of these offices after a long 1991-1995 leave. Maybe they did rehire some of rank-and-file agents. Eventually.
      - varjag 5y ago
        No, I don't have time for conspiracist crap: there's way too much of it and mental health is finite resource. The event were contemporary to me and I still have a sound memory. Do you really think KGB had 15 operatives? You seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Cheka has never lost the continuity, that's the major problem of Russia right now.
        thriftwy 5y ago
        These are KGB's top brass and not just some agents. I am saying that KGB ceased to be in 1991 and FSB was created in late 1993. You are saying it is a conspiracy theory, because "because".
        varjag 5y ago
        It did not cease to exist just because a few apparatchiks were shuffled. Bortnikov has started his career in KGB, continued through FSK and is now the head og FSB. Perfect continuity. Patrushev, the previous head of FSB before getting appointed to the Security Council also started as a KGB officer, continued in FSK until it was reformed into FSB. Thousands upon thousands of lower ranks also continued working in the same organization, same offices, park on the same lots and refer to themselves as Chekists. To this day.
- starwind 5y ago
  I remember reading a chapter about the Russian internal security forces between the fall of the Soviet Union and 2005 and it kind of made my head spin. In a nutshell—the KGB was dissolved into like 3 organizations and over the next few years it was re-consolidated into the FSB, albeit with more control from the president (Putin)

somat 5y ago

"I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia." My knowledge of the event is solely based on the article. but it does specifically mention that the us wanted and asked russia to take the material but russia did not want it. I know that at this time the us was buying a lot of fissibles from russia as well. I think the theory was that 1. it would inject money into russia which was broke and 2 it would remove the fissables from ending up on the open market. win-win. Honestly I would love to read a good in depth history of the breakup of the soviet-union. I don't really understand what happened at all.

walnutclosefarm 5y ago
Collapse, The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok is an excellent political and economic history of the end of the Soviet Union. It isn't long on technical details of the kind the posted article refers to, but covers the personalities, goals, strategies in the political and economic areas very thoroughly (and is unsparing of both the leadership and actors in the former Soviet Union, the Eastern European nations, and the West).

gumby 5y ago

> I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia. I remember the events in the article (denuclearization of Ukraine,and other; Kazakhstan’s radioactive being sold to US) as they appeared in the contemporaneous news. Setting things up as described in the article may have been low key but in the end the process was public. Russia had enough going on at the time.

qiskit 5y ago

> At least I find it strange that Russia would happily see the material handed off like that, and I think it's more likely that all of this happened behind the back of Russia. Why would you be surprised? Russia in the 90s was facing far more pressing problems than military equipment and even nuclear material. I remember reading that we actually paid russia and former soviet nations to keep their nuclear materials secure since much of the former soviet union was in a state of economic collapse in the 90s.

starwind 5y ago
This was Nunn-Lugar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperative_Threat_Reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn%E2%80%93Lugar_Cooperative... The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) traces its history to this legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Threat_Reduction_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Threat_Reduction_Agenc...