Chronology
PIR PRESS NEWS
Amb. Roland Timerbaev – a luminary in the field of nonproliferation, an undisputed authority, a great teacher and mentor – has passed away.
“Autonomous systems are gradually displacing humans from the battlefield, and in many aspects, this can be a boon to the military, who are exposed to less risk. However, at the same time, humans transfer to artificial intelligence (AI) a part of their powers, and consequently a part of their responsibility. According to experts, neural networks will probably never learn to explain their decisions to humans. This can become a serious problem once AI is involved in such areas as intelligence, data analysis, communications and control, scenario development, and in the long run decision making.” – Director of PIR Center’s Emerging Technologies and Global Security Project Vadim Kozyulin.
“The latest prepcom has two main opposite results: in two weeks it was not possible to reach consensus among the NPT members and agree on the text of recommendations for the 2020 Review Conference, but it was decided to appoint Argentinean diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi as the Chair of the Review Conference – his formal appointment will take place at the end of 2019," Adlan Margoev, PIR Center “Russia and Nuclear Nonproliferation” Program Director.
Conventional Arms and Prospects of Arms Trade Treaty. Useful links
Useful Resources
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs web page on Arms Trade Treaty: http://www.mid.ru/ns-dvbr.nsf/dvarmstrade You can find official documents and presentations by Russian officials here. All the materials are mainly given in Russian and English.
Site of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation (Russian state department for arms export) http://www.fsvts.gov.ru/eng.html contains regulatory legal acts on the Russian export of arms and military equipment, information about Russian participation in international military exhibitions and shows, interviews of senior arms exporters. You can also see references to web sites of main Russian defense producers. Some materials are available only in Russian.
The Russian Federation Ministry of Defense web page http://www.mil.ru/eng/ provides very general information on the ministry objectives, senior officials. The page “Links” contains a substantial list of references to official Russian state sites starting from Kremlin and ending up with Defense Procurement Agency.
The Official Document Search System of the United Nations http://documents.un.org/ will let you find UN papers and records by key words and other search parameters. All the materials are available in six official UN languages and various formats.
The web site of the international NGO Saferworld www.saferworld.co.uk contains considerable volume of information on conventional arms control, conflict prevention, security sector reform etc. Original reports by Saferworld deserve special mentioning. Some of them are available in Russian.
www.smallarmssurvey.org serves as the principal international source of public information on all aspects of small arms and as a resource for governments, policy-makers, researchers, and activists.
Visitor of the International Action Network on Small Arms web site www.iansa.org will know about international community activities against armed violence presenting a real threat to developing but also to developed countries. The resource contains reports, legal acts and statistics on SALW. The page http://www.iansa.org/un/att.htm is devoted to ATT.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute web site www.sipri.org is dedicated to conflicts, armaments, arms control and disarmament. SIPRI provides data, analysis and recommendations based on open sources to policymakers, researchers, media and public.
International Institute for Strategic Studies web site www.iiss.org is the primary source of accurate, objective information on international strategic issues for politicians and diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists, academics and the informed public.
Resource in Russian only
Russian Weapons web site (Оружие России) http://www.arms-expo.ru/ provides information on modern and prospect military systems but also contains data on military exhibitions as well as current news on defense issues.
Independent Military Review (Независимоe военное обозрение) http://nvo.ng.ru is a source of operative and analytical information on military reforms and national security of Russia.
Monthly National Defense journal (Национальная оборона) http://www.oborona.ru/ is devoted to wide spectrum of the Russian national defense issues.