Russia seals loose lips

As you know there has been many loose lips in the Russian arms industry, something that must have annoyed the Chinese government. Now it looks like the free flow of info is coming to an end:

(got this first from Xinhui at the CDF)

Russia: New Arms Sales Classification Powers Seen Blocking News Media
Moscow Ekspert in Russian 10 Jun 02
[Unattributed report: “And No One Will Be Any the Wiser”]

President of Russia Vladimir Putin has by his edict endowed the Committee for Military-Technical Cooperation (KVTS) with the right to handle information classed as a state secret. Now the KVTS may classify any information on the sale of Russian arms that it deems necessary.

According to the edict, the committee has gained access to secrets of the foreign policy and trade and scientific and technical relations of Russia with foreign states and confidentially obtained data on the government’s defense procurement contract and exports and imports of arms and military equipment and their maintenance and operation and also information on Russia’s outstanding accounts with foreign states.

The committee itself greeted the presidential edict with approval and expressed the hope that the new powers would contribute to more productive work. “Our sphere does not tolerate publicity, and journalists often fail to recognize that they could in disseminating information on military-technical cooperation be harming the country’s interests,” a director of this agency who is not authorized to comment on the situation and who wished, therefore, to remain incognito told Ekspert. We are talking primarily about the recent flap involving the delivery to China of our destroyers for a total of $1.4 billion, which was covered extensively in all the nongovernmental news media. On account of the contradictory decisions of our government, the Chinese at that time just about annulled the contract, which had already been signed. But now our news media will most likely never get to know of such instances.

The KVTS has already begun to thoroughly avail itself of its new powers. Following the recent meeting of Sergey Ivanov, minister of defense of Russia, and PRC Chairman Jiang Zemin, at which new purchases of Russian arms were discussed, the committee leadership made the decision to classify the details of Russo-Chinese military-technical cooperation. True, as the KVTS maintains, this was done at the request of the Chinese side. Nonetheless, it may be assumed that such requests will now be coming from other states as well. The next country will most likely be India. It will in the very near future be sold the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier with 20 carrier fighters. Considering the desire of the Indian military that Russia develop and install on board this ship launchers for the nuclear-warhead Agni-2 missiles, the sum total of the contract could exceed $2 billion. India will almost certainly be followed by Brazil, which has announced a tender for the purchase of fighters worth $700 million, in which our Su-35 planes are participating, and then Turkey, which has yet to make a final decision on the purchase of 130 Erdogan Ka-50-2 Russo-Turkish helicopter gunships for a sum total of almost $2 billion. When the information on these transactions is a state secret, any attempt by the news media to make an objective assessment of cooperation in the sphere of military-technical cooperation could be seen as endangerment of Russia’s national interests.

[Description of Source: Moscow Ekspert in Russian — Weekly business magazine known for its reporting and analysis of financial-industrial groups and their political interests, partly owned by Vladimir Potanin.]