Page Updated: 16-Oct-2006
SPS Homepage > responding to NATO priorities

Enhancing cooperation with Russia and Ukraine

Joint endeavours between NATO and Russia are agreed upon by the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) and include combating terrorism, theatre missile defence and crisis management. Key areas of NATO-Ukraine consultation and cooperation are agreed between NATO and the Ukrainian government in their Annual Target Plan and include peace-support operations, defence and security sector reform and economic aspects of defence.

NATO-Russia cooperation

Under the NRC Committee on Science for Peace and Security, a special NATO-Russia co-operation was established, which focuses on the following security-related priority research areas:

• Explosives Detection;
• Psychological and Sociological Consequences of Terrorism;
• Forecast and Prevention of Catastrophes;
• Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Protection;
• Cybersecurity;
• Transport Security, including Border Security; and
• defence-Related Environmental Issues

In addition, special meetings between Russian and NATO country experts are held periodically to identify key activities for NATO-Russia cooperation. Russian scientists have contributed to a wide range of workshops, including:

• “Commercial and Pre-Commercial Cell Detection Technologies for Defence against Bioterror - from Idea to Commercial Realization”, 6-8 September 2006, Brno, Czeh Republic
• “Resilience to Crises : Putting Risk Science and Information Technology to Work”, 11-14 January 2006, Prague, Czech Republic
• “Anti-Terrorist Strategies : Comparing the Experiences of the U.S., Great Britain, France, Turkey and Russia”, 4-6 May 2006, Washington DC, USA
• “Sociological and Psychological Aspects of Terrorism”, 7-8 September 2006, Washington DC, USA
• “Psychological Effects of Radiological Terrorism”, 12-13 October 2006, Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Russian scientists are also offering their expertise to applied Research and Development (R&D) activities, including two ongoing Science for Peace projects for anthrax and explosives detection.

The NATO-Russia cooperation promotes, encourages and co-ordinates joint co--operative nationally funded projects, involving experts from NATO countries and Russia. Recent activities include a short term project on Ecoterrorism and a workshop on Oil Spill Response (Dartmouth, Canada, 11-13 October 2006).

NATO-Ukraine cooperation

The NATO-Ukraine Joint Working Group for Scientific and Environmental Cooperation contributes a chapter to the Annual Target Plan.

In 2006, Several workshops on security-related topics were co-organised by Ukrainian scientists and included such topics as “Cyber Terrorism as a New Security Threat” and “Environmental Security Threats in Urban Settings”.

With the participation of Ukrainian scientists, work is being done on two Science for Peace projects focusing on:

• The development of a new sensing technique for the detection of biological agents (grant awarded to the Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv);
• The development of a new generation of body armour material (with the involvement of the Institute for Single Crystals in Kharkiv)

top