After AUKUS, Russia sees a potential threat — and an opportunity to market its own submarines

Alexei Druzhinin/AP

Alexey D Muraviev, Curtin UniversityThe global opinions on the new AUKUS security pact between Australia, the US and the UK have been decidedly mixed. China and France immediately blasted the deal, while others, such as Japan and the Philippines, were more welcoming.

Russia, one of the other few nations armed with nuclear-powered submarines, was more low-key and cautious in its initial reaction.

The Kremlin limited its official commentary to a carefully crafted statement that said,

Before forming a position, we must understand the goals, objectives, means. These questions need to be answered first. There is little information so far.

Some Russian diplomatic officials joined their Chinese counterparts in expressing their concerns that Australia’s development of nuclear-powered submarines (with American and British help) would undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and “speed up an arms race” in the region.

They suggested the construction of the nuclear submarine fleet would need to be overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency — a proposition unlikely to be acceptable to Canberra.

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‘Prototype of an Asian NATO’

As more became known about the new security pact, the rhetoric of Kremlin officials began to shift.

For instance, former Australian ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, boldly declared AUKUS was intended to counter not only China’s power in the Indo-Pacific region, but Russia’s, too.

Soon after, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, was calling the pact a “prototype of an Asian NATO”. He added,

Washington will try to involve other countries in this organisation, chiefly in order to pursue anti-China and anti-Russia policies

This change of rhetoric should not come as a surprise to Canberra. Russia has long considered any change to regional security — the creation of new alliances, for instance, or the deployment of new weapons systems — a military risk that would require a response.

Marketing its own nuclear submarines

So, what possible options could Russia entertain as part of its response?

Since Moscow’s view of AUKUS is more of a political and military risk, but not yet a threat, its immediate responses are likely to be limited to political manoeuvring and opportunity grabbing.

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Perhaps most notably, Russia may see the AUKUS submarine deal as setting a precedent, allowing it to promote its own nuclear-submarine technology to interested parties in the region. This is not merely hypothetical — it has been suggested by defence experts with close links to Russia’s Ministry of Defence.

Historically, Russia has held back from sharing its nuclear submarine technology, which is considered among the best in the world, certainly superior to China’s nascent capabilities.

Thus far, Moscow has only entered into leasing arrangements with India, allowing its navy to operate Soviet- and Russian-made nuclear-powered attack submarines since 1987. But this has not entailed the transfer of technology to India.

Should Russia decide to market its nuclear-powered submarines to other nations, it would have no shortage of interested buyers. As one military expert suggested, Vietnam or Algeria are potential markets — but there could be others. As he put it,

Literally before our eyes, a new market for nuclear powered submarines is being created. […] Now we can safely offer a number of our strategic partners.

Expanding its submarine force in the Pacific

In the longer run, Russia will also not disregard the obvious: the new pact unites two nuclear-armed nations (the US and UK) and a soon-to-be-nuclear-capable Australia.

The expanded endurance and range of Australia’s future submarines could see them operating in the western and northwestern Pacific, areas of regular activity for Russia’s naval force.

A Russian Navy destroyer visiting the Philippines in 2019.
Bullit Marquez/AP

Should the strike systems on board these submarines have the Russian far east or parts of Siberia within their range, it would be a game-changer for Moscow.

As a nuclear superpower, Russia will need to factor this into its strategic planning. And this means Australia must keep a close watch on Russia’s military activities in the Pacific in the coming years.

Over the next 12 months, for instance, the Russian Pacific Fleet is expected to receive at least three nuclear-powered submarines.

Two of these fourth-generation submarines (the Yasen-M class) are technologically superior to similar vessels currently being built by the Chinese and are believed to be almost comparable to the American nuclear submarines being considered an option for Australia.

The third is a 30,000-tonne, modified Oscar II class Belgorod submarine converted to carry several nuclear super-torpedos capable of destroying major naval bases.

By 2028, I estimate Russia’s navy will have a force of at least 14 nuclear-powered submarines and six conventional attack submarines in the Pacific.

Should Russia start considering AUKUS a military threat, we could expect more to arrive. Their area of operations could also be expanded to the South China Sea, and beyond.

Deepening naval ties with China

In the most dramatic scenario, Russia and China could form a loose maritime coalition to counter the combined military power of the AUKUS pact.

Given the deepening state of Russia-China defence relations, particularly in the naval sphere, this does not seem unrealistic.

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This possible coalition is unlikely to become an actual maritime alliance, let alone the basis for larger bloc involving other countries. Still, if Russia and China were to coordinate their naval activities, that would be bad news for the AUKUS.

Should tensions escalate, Moscow and Beijing could see Australia as the weakest link of the pact. In its typical bombastic language, China’s Global Times newspaper has already referred to Australia as a “potential target for a nuclear strike”.

This might be a far-fetched scenario, but by entering the nuclear submarine race in the Indo-Pacific, Australia would become part of an elite club, some of whom would be adversaries. And there is the potential for this to lead to a naval Cold War of sorts in the Indo-Pacific.

Sceptics may say Moscow is likely to be all talk but no action and the risks posed by Russia to Australia are minimal. Let’s hope this is correct.

Alexey D Muraviev, Associate Professor of National Security and Strategic Studies, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus Update: Global

Growing evidence suggests Russia’s Sputnik V COVID vaccine is safe and very effective. But questions about the data remain

Antonio Calanni/AP/AAP

Megan Steain, University of Sydney and Jamie Triccas, University of SydneyRussia was the first country to register a COVID vaccine, with its health ministry giving emergency approval to the Sputnik V vaccine in August 2020.

This decision was met with scepticism from the international scientific community because it came a month before results of phase 1 and 2 trials were published.

Growing data from clinical trials and real world rollouts suggests the vaccine is safe and very effective. But there are several outstanding questions around the vaccine, such as whether it’s associated with the very rare blood clotting condition seen with AstraZeneca’s vaccine, and how well it performs against variants of the coronavirus.

So what kind of vaccine is Sputnik V, how does it work, and what data are we missing?

How does Sputnik V work?

Sputnik V was designed by The Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology. It has its very own Twitter account advertising its status as the “world’s first registered COVID-19 vaccine” and approval in 69 countries including Russia, South Korea, Argentina and the UAE.

Like the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the basis for the vaccine is a harmless form of adenovirus, one of several viruses that can cause the common cold.

The adenovirus acts as a packaging system for DNA to deliver instructions to our cells. This DNA instructs cells to make the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2. The immune system is then trained to generate an immune response to the spike protein, which provides protection against the real SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Unlike the other adenovirus-based vaccines, Sputnik V uses two different adenoviruses for the first and second dose. This is done as people can develop an immune response against the adenovirus vector used in the first shot of the vaccine, which could possibly reduce the overall effectiveness.

The two doses are separated by three weeks, rather than the 8-12 weeks usually recommended for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Sputnik V doesn’t require the ultra-cold temperatures like the mRNA-based vaccines, which makes it an attractive candidate for many countries desperate for vaccines. Gamaleya has been open to sharing its manufacturing platform, unlike some other vaccines.

How well does Sputnik V work against COVID-19?

Data from the phase 1 and 2 clinical trial was published in September in the highly reputed medical journal The Lancet. The data showed no major adverse reactions, and side effects that were common to the other COVID-19 vaccines. These were primarily fever, headaches and pain at the injection site.

Most impressively were the results of the larger phase 3 trial published in The Lancet in February this year, which reported 91.6% efficacy against symptomatic infection. This places Sputnik on par with the mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, for which the original efficacies were 95% and 94.1% respectively.

The results from the phase 3 trial also suggested a single dose was protective, with an efficacy of 79.4%. This led to the approval of “Sputnik Light” in some countries, a single dose regimen that overcomes some of the issues manufacturing the second dose of Sputnik V. The two different adenoviruses used in the first and second dose of Sputnik V need to be produced using separate cell cultures. Only having to produce a single type of adenovirus streamlines the production.

Outside of these trials, a press release from Gamaleya says real world analysis of the vaccine given to nearly 3.8 million Russians reported an efficacy of 97.6% against infection. This led Gamaleya to claim Sputnik V is “the world’s most effective vaccine”.

Despite the encouraging efficacy results, there are still some concerns. Both the phase 1 and 2 safety trials, and the phase 3 efficacy trials, have been criticised for not sharing their raw data or the full details of their study design, as well as inconsistencies in the published data.

Sputnik V isn’t yet approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or the World Health Organization, meaning it cannot be used by COVAX, the COVID vaccine global access initiative. Gamaleya has yet to provide the EMA with all the necessary manufacturing and clinical data necessary to gain this approval.

What are the unanswered questions about Sputnik V?

There are a number of outstanding issues with the vaccine.

Of particular importance is the question of whether it’s associated with the very rare blood clotting condition that’s been linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson vaccines, which also use adenovirus vectors.

Gamaleya claims there have been no reports of this occurring in individuals given Sputnik V. Analysis following the administration of 2.8 million doses of Sputnik V in Argentina supports this. The results, announced via a press release by the Argentine health ministry, reported no deaths associated with vaccination and showed mostly mild adverse events.

And there was no indication of an association between Sputnik V and this condition in the clinical trials.

However, there hasn’t been enough published real world data to be completely confident researchers would be able to pick up on the condition if it did emerge.

It’s also unclear how well Sputnik performs against the rapidly spreading variants of concern, such as Delta. Some of these variants are partially able to escape from the immune response generated by COVID vaccines.

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Research published in July examined antibodies in the blood of people vaccinated with Sputnik V to see how it performed against the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. It found there was a reduction in the ability of their antibodies to block infection. It’s unclear how this reduction would impact the vaccine’s effectiveness against hospitalisation and death, as we’re still waiting to see published real world data on this.

We need further studies which directly compare blood samples from people vaccinated with the different vaccines before Sputnik’s claims of being highly effective against variants can be confirmed. We’ll also need to see real world analysis of its effectiveness against variants, such as that performed with Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

Megan Steain, Lecturer, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney and Jamie Triccas, Professor of Medical Microbiology, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Coronavirus Update: Global

Coronavirus Update: Global

Global Coronavirus Update

How Vladimir Putin uses natural gas to exert Russian influence and punish his enemies

Pipes for Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline are loaded onto a ship at a German port, June 1, 2021.
Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty Images

Lena Surzhko Harned, Penn StateThe recent U.S.-Russia summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin suggests that a controversial Russian natural gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, is a done deal.

If completed as planned by the end of this year, Nord Stream 2 will convey 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea and thence to the rest of Europe. It is expected to bring US$3.2 billion to Russia annually.

Construction had been halted for over a year by U.S. sanctions passed in 2019 on the pipeline’s construction and financing. Sanctions were later expanded in 2020. Some Russia experts expected those sanctions to be a bargaining chip for Biden at the recent Geneva summit to pressure Putin over Russian occupation of territories in Ukraine and Georgia; support for Belarus’ dictatorial regime; violation of human rights within Russia; and the poisoning, jailing and outlawing of political opposition.

Instead, a month before the summit, the White House lifted sanctions on Nord Stream 2, dismaying some U.S. legislators and U.S. partners in Europe.

The pipeline project is a joint venture between a handful of European gas companies and Russian giant Gazprom, a majority state-owned company that is the largest gas supplier in the world. For Putin, the pipeline is an opportunity to increase his influence in Europe by deepening the region’s dependence on Russian energy.

Natural gas has been the bedrock of Putin’s power both domestically and internationally for decades. Nord Stream 2 gives the Russian leader a new direct and powerful line of control in Western Europe.

Biden and Putin had a tense if cordial meeting in Geneva.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images News via Getty Images

How Putin controls Russian oil

Since taking office in 2000, Putin began seizing control of the Russian gas and oil industry. He renationalized Gazprom, the state oil company that had been privatized after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Scholarly research has demonstrated that regaining government control over the gas and oil industry contributed to consolidation of authoritarianism in Russia. And it coincided with crackdowns on Putin’s political opposition.

In 2003 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owner of the Yukos oil company and a vocal critic of Putin’s growing authoritarianism, became the regime’s first famous political prisoner, after he was arrested at gunpoint and imprisoned for 10 years for tax evasion. Yukos was eventually seized by the government and absorbed into the state-owned companies.

By the end of his first term in office in 2004, Putin’s government had significant control over oil and gas production in Russia, which is the one of largest producers and exporters in the world. Proceeds collected from oil and gas sales allowed Putin to pay for his domestic agenda and boost military spending. It also gave him extraordinary leverage over neighboring countries that relied on Russia for their energy needs.

For example, in 2006 and 2009, when the Ukrainian government adopted more pro-Western policies and upset the Kremlin, Russia outright shut off the country’s gas supply – and by extension, shut off the gas of countries down the supply line in Central and Western Europe, including Germany.

Russia versus Europe

As a direct line of supply from Russia to Europe, Nord Stream 2 could avoid such problems for Western Europe in the future. But it also opens Western Europe to the same kind of direct Russian pressure it has used to punish Ukraine. So the proposed pipeline has been divisive.

Nord Stream 2 has already produced a rift between NATO allies, even before its completion.

Sweden, Poland and the Baltic countries, for example, have all raised concerns, citing environmental problems related to construction and maintenance of the pipeline. They worry that Russia will use its new pipeline infrastructure to increase its military naval presence in the Baltic Sea. That would increase Russia’s intelligence-gathering capacity.

Further “crumbling NATO,” as Putin puts it – sowing divisions in the alliance – would be a win for his regime.

The Russian leader sees NATO, which he calls a Cold War relic, as the greatest threat to Russian security. Disunity in Europe allows Russia to continue pursuing political repression of its own citizens and territorial aggression against neighboring nations with less foreign interference.

Ukraine’s dilemma

For Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 presents both a security and financial threat.

Ukraine largely stopped buying gas from Russia in 2015 following Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and support for a still-deadly Russian-sponsored separatist war in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.

A Russian military drill in April 2021 in Crimea, a former territory of Ukraine that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
AP Photo/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service

However, Ukraine still collects up to US$3 billion in annual fees because Russian gas currently runs through a pipeline in Ukrainian territory to get to Europe.

Nord Stream 2 will deprive Ukraine of this income. According to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the money lost in gas transit fees will mean Ukraine will have “nothing to pay for the Ukrainian army” to defend Ukraine from further Russian aggression.

In April 2021, observers documented a build-up of Russian military at Ukraine’s border with Russia, as well as in the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The Russian military pulled back after a few weeks, but there is evidence that some 80,000 Russian troops remain near Ukraine, along with military equipment, including trucks and armored vehicles.

Zelensky says the pipeline has become a “real weapon” against Ukraine. In Kyiv, fears are that once Russia stops relying on Ukraine for transit to Europe, Putin will begin to exert more pressure on the Ukrainian government over the warring Donbas region or resume military aggression.

The risk may not be worth the reward of cheaper gas prices for European consumers. The economic boost that Russia will likely receive from capturing the European gas market will further enrich Putin’s kleptocratic regime – and, history shows, finance his undemocratic projects in Eastern Europe and beyond.

[The Conversation’s most important politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter.]

Lena Surzhko Harned, Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cyber Cold War? The US and Russia talk tough, but only diplomacy will ease the threat

Patrick Semansky/AP

Ahmed Ibrahim, Edith Cowan University and Paul Haskell-Dowland, Edith Cowan UniversityOver the past few years, tensions have been rising between Russia and the United States — not in conventional military terms, but in cyberspace. The issue came to a head at this month’s summit in Geneva, when US President Joe Biden threatened reprisals over allegedly Russian-backed cyber-attacks on US targets.

This confrontation first rose to global attention in 2016, when the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported Russia had directly influenced the outcome of the presidential election, favouring the Republican candidate Donald Trump by hacking and leaking 60,000 emails from the private account of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign director.

Then, in 2020, a major cyber attack on IT firm SolarWinds compromised the security of a wide range of US government and industry entities, including the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held Russia responsible for the incident, although Trump himself went against the consensus, seeking to downplay the attack and blame China instead.

Microsoft president Brad Smith described it as the “largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen”. Microsoft began investigating the attack after many of its customers were caught up in it, including major tech companies and federal agencies.

Russia denied any involvement in the SolarWinds incident, publicly rejecting what it described as “unfounded attempts of the US media to blame Russia for hacker attacks on US governmental bodies”.

The attack was ultimately attributed to a cyber-criminal group called Nobelium, which has continued to be active and allegedly perpetrated a series of cyber-attacks earlier this year, although there is no clear evidence it did so with Kremlin backing.

Fuel pipelines and black angus steak

More recently, the US Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, which crippled the largest oil pipeline in the US, was attributed to a Russian cyber-mercenary gang codenamed DarkSide.

That was followed last month by an attack on meat processor JBS, shutting down parts of its operations in the US, Canada and Australia, and severely disrupting global meat supplies. This time the FBI pointed the finger at REvil, another profitable Russian-based cyber-criminal group.

In both of these cases, the victims reportedly paid ransoms to resume their operations. While this is expensive and arguably encourages future attacks, disruptions in operations can be even more costly.

The FBI claims to have recovered more than US$2 million of the ransom paid by the Colonial Pipeline Company.

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The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the SolarWinds hack were all but inevitable – why national cyber defense is a ‘wicked’ problem

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A few weeks before the Colonial Pipeline attack, the Biden administration imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its cyber-meddling in US elections. But the US has now understandably made combating ransomware attacks its top priority.

The Ransomware Task Force, convened in December 2020 by Microsoft and leading tech security firms, called for global cooperation to tackle the ransomware threat and break its business model.

Does the US engage in similar activities?

The US is certainly known for its cyber-offensive capabilities. Perhaps the most widely reported engagement was the 2010 Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

In 2015, the US Cyber Command and National Security Agency successfully hacked key members of ISIS, while the following year Wikileaks revealed the CIA had developed a powerful suite of hacking tools.

The US has both the capability and the motivation to conduct extensive cyber-infiltration of its adversaries.

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Cyber attacks can shut down critical infrastructure. It’s time to make cyber security compulsory

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At this month’s US-Russia summit in Geneva, Biden talked about establishing cyber-norms and declaring certain critical infrastructure as off-limits.

This list identified 16 sectors that should be excluded from offensive action, including government facilities, IT systems, energy infrastructure, and food and agriculture — all four of which have come under suspected Russian-backed attack in recent years.

Some cyber-security advocates have criticised US strategies in recent years as being too weak. Biden’s comments at the Geneva summit seem to be an attempt to strike a firmer tone.

So is this the start of a cyber-war?

Cyberspace is considered the fifth domain for warfare, after land, sea, air and space. But the truth is that IT systems are now so ubiquitous that they are also firmly embedded in the four other domains too, meaning a successful cyber attack can weaken an enemy in many kinds of ways.

This in turn can make it hard to even define what counts as an offensive act of cyber-war, let alone identify the aggressor.

Although the Kremlin continues to deny any association with cyber-criminal gangs such as DarkSide or REvil, Russia nevertheless stands accused of giving them safe harbour.

How do we stop global cyber attacks?

The recent Ransomware Task Force report specifically attempted to address the issue of ransomware. But it also offers useful advice for countering state-backed cyber-crime. It recommends:

• coordinated, international diplomatic and law-enforcement efforts to confront cyber-threats
• establishing relevant agencies to manage cyber incidents
• internationally coordinated efforts to establish frameworks to help organisations that are subject to cyber-attacks.

Successfully stamping out international cyber-attacks will be tremendously hard, and is ultimately only achievable with good diplomacy, trust, cooperation and communication.

While global superpowers continue to sponsor cyber-attacks on foreign shores while decrying attacks against their own assets, all we end up with is the virtual equivalent of mutually assured destruction.

Ahmed Ibrahim, Lecturer (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University and Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine?

Russian Influence in Australia