United States Foreign Relations Russia

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Wednesday ordered 50 Russian diplomats to leave the United States--six of them immediately--partly in response to the spy case involving former FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen, U.S. officials said.

Russia's extensive sales of advanced military technology to China are enabling Beijing to obtain core elements of the high-technology defense industries that made the Soviet Union a superpower, according to senior Bush Administration officials and private defense specialists. As recently as last summer, Western concerns about the outflow of Russian military technology to China focused on individual weapons systems, such as SU-27 fighter planes and missile guidance systems.

Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, on his way to Washington in the hope of winning billions of dollars in aid, turned around over the Atlantic and returned home Tuesday after it became apparent that NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia were imminent.

Behind a huge white shroud a mile from the Kremlin, construction crews are working in secret to clean up one of the biggest embarrassments of the Cold War. In the U.S. Embassy compound, a six-story curtain surrounds the chancery building that was once supposed to be the top-secret nerve center of United States operations in the Soviet Union. These days, the steady sound of jackhammers comes from behind the curtain.

The U.S.-Russian team searching for American prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action has yet to uncover information leading to any living American service personnel, and there are only minuscule chances that such individuals exist here, officials said Thursday. "I, for one, believe that the probability of finding an American (POW or MIA) in Russia today is close to nil," said Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, the Russian chairman of the joint commission on the fate of American POWs and MIAs.

Five years of capitalism have created a new face for Russia's space program, and it is starting to look a lot like its longtime rival: corporate America. At once-secret Soviet facilities, Russian and American engineers now work together to design and build space vehicles. U.S. firms such as Lockheed Martin and Hughes Electronics collaborate with Russia on commercial satellite launches. Astronauts and cosmonauts train side by side for joint missions in space.

Russia summoned U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering on Friday and warned him that Moscow considers any contact between the United States and leaders of the rebel government of Chechnya to be "unacceptable," Russian news agencies reported. However, the breakaway republic's foreign minister, Shamsettin Yusuf, who is now visiting Washington, said in a telephone interview that he had met with two U.S. State Department officials for more than an hour Friday to explain Chechen President Dzhokar M.

Their grandfathers' argument in a mock-up of an American kitchen made Cold War history. Now the grandson of President Richard Nixon and a granddaughter of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev sat side by side Sunday, 36 years to the day after Nixon had predicted in a speech that Khrushchev's grandchildren would live in freedom. "Nixon was right and Khrushchev was wrong," Nina Khrushcheva, 32, told the crowd gathered at the Nixon Library & Birthplace.

Crowing with pride, Russia's air force chief claimed Wednesday that a group of Russian warplanes buzzed the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Sea of Japan, taking pictures of the reaction on deck, in an episode that flashed back to the cat-and-mouse games of the Cold War. "For the Americans, our planes were a complete surprise," boasted Gen. Anatoly M. Kornukov, the Russian air force's commander in chief. "In the pictures, you can clearly see the panic on deck."

Caustically suggesting that Washington wants to run the world, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin told President Clinton on Monday that a U.S.-led plan to expand NATO threatens to plunge Europe "into a cold peace."

As a light snow fell at dusk, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell showed up at the busy subway station on Pushkin Square here to place a bouquet of red roses beneath a plaque marking the spot where a suitcase bomb killed 13 and injured dozens Aug. 8, 2000. Powell bowed his head as Russian TV cameras filmed the scene. The brief ceremony last December contrasted sharply with President Clinton's visit here barely a month after the attack. Clinton never went near the site.

The U.S. ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry here twice in the last few days. A delegation of experts has been dispatched from Washington to handle the crisis. Preparations for today's start of tense negotiations in the latest U.S.-Russian flare-up dominated what should have been a festive holiday weekend. It's not tension in Central Asia that has ruffled Russian feathers, however, or a recent U.S. report slamming Moscow's human rights record.

Since he began his 2000 campaign, President Bush has sought to win recognition as the leader who cut the American and Russian nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, to "leave the Cold War behind." Yet in the first year of his term, the Bush administration has overhauled the nation's nuclear arms policy in ways that reach far beyond the count of offensive warheads.

A Russian official Friday praised a compromise with the Bush administration that he said will mean as much as $620 million more from the United States to help Russia dismantle its deadly chemical weapons arsenal. Sergei V. Kiriyenko, President Vladimir V. Putin's special envoy for chemical disarmament, said the agreement is crucial for both countries at a time when the world has become more alert to the possibility of chemical weapons' finding their way into the hands of terrorists.

The Bush administration is speeding efforts to safeguard Cold War-era nuclear stockpiles before terrorists can get hold of them, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Friday. Addressing the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in Beverly Hills, Abraham outlined a series of measures aimed primarily at securing the former Soviet Union's vast stockpiles of weapon-grade radioactive materials. "We are facing a situation we think is, frankly, more harrowing than it was a decade ago. . . .

President Bush failed Monday to gain Russia's agreement that Iraq, Iran and North Korea constitute what he again called an "axis of evil" bent on spreading terror around the world. Bush met for about 30 minutes in the Oval Office with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov, who afterward expressed skepticism about the direction the president has taken in the new phase of the war against terrorism. The Bush administration has been eager to promote the success of the U.S.

A new round of U.S.-Russian military talks adjourned Wednesday with U.S. officials voicing hope for an eventual deal but Russians clearly concerned that the Americans may be unwilling to commit themselves to lasting nuclear arms reductions. In a Pentagon news conference closing two days of meetings, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith said the two sides agreed to set up committees to improve cooperation on arms reduction, nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, missile defense and other issues.

The United States' decision to withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia could threaten international stability by freeing other nations to end peace agreements, Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov said Monday. After a meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Ivanov said the move would not unbalance U.S.-Russian relations.

President Bush's decision to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty with the Russians was a masterstroke of timing that has confounded critics of his missile defense program and greatly improves the odds that the controversial system will be built, opponents and supporters of the system agreed Wednesday.

Playing off their deepening partnership, the United States and Russia announced Monday that they hope to formalize an agreement on strategic weapons cuts, signaling a new approach to arms control, at a summit between President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin next year. After talks between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Putin at the Kremlin, Russia also said that ongoing and fundamental differences over the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty may not get resolved.