Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

How the Russians may have known is a question whose answer can only be purely speculation.  (At the end of this article I'll speculate.)  And it's likely that China may have been aware of some of the information known to the Russians.  Probably for different reasons.

Let's look at the Russian case.  Recall, it was Russia's Defense Minister, Sergi Ivanov, who said the Moscow Government believed the strength of the NK weapon was between 5-15 kilotons on October 9, 2006, the day after the test.  And as of Wednesday, October 11, 2006:

Only Russia has said the evidence available confirms a nuclear blast actually occurred.

What that evidence is has never been clarified exactly.  Threats Watch.org does a nice bit of analysis on this part of Ivan Oelrich's post on the Strategic Security Blog concerning Russia's characterization:

There was early confusion about how large the explosion actually was, with U.S., French, and South Korean seismologists reporting a yield equivalent to about 500 tons of high explosive, that is half a kiloton, while the Russians reported that the yield was in the range of 10 to 15 kilotons, or twenty to thirty times larger. From the beginning, the source of this huge discrepancy was difficult to understand. Soon, the Russian seismic data were released and it became clear that even their own data did not support the Russian claim.    Federation of American Scientists

The key question is: Did the Russians knowingly release an estimation of bomb size, even though their own -- and the rest of the monitoring world's -- seismic data could not support that estimate?

It looks like they did.  Russia's ambassador to the UN was first out of the blocks objecting to US sanctions proposals against NK.

Mr. Churkin said Hе had аsked Mr. Boltоn on Thursday [Oct. 12, 2006] morning not tо call for a vote, "but what happened, happened." Forex News

But China was less vehment, when it

   . . .sent an emissary tо thе White House, Tang Jiaхuan, who met with President Bush during thе day and appeared tо bе walking a line bеtween punishing North Korea and preventing thе United States from taking meаsures thаt would seriously threaten thе government, according tо thе deputy national security adviser, J. D. Crouch.

The explosion occurred Sunday, October 8, 2006 around 10:36 PM EST -- 11:36 AM Monday in Korea.

That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away.  NYT

Russia has not reported receiving a similar call, in spite of being, like China, North Korea's abutting neighbor and historically sharing a Stalinist government.

Interestingly, it is the Russians who seem to be the first -- and only? -- who are talking to the North Koreans face-to-face over their nuclear test.  This seems odd since China is widely regarded as the nation with the most diplomatic influence on and clout over North Korea.

A Russian nuclear envoy who visited North Korea said Saturday he pressed the North to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev said he had a "very useful" meeting Friday [October 13, 2006] with Kim Gye Gwan, the North's nuclear negotiator, but did not say how Kim responded.  Lycos News

Useful to whom?  Presumably to Russia.

While China's objections to the now in place sanctions agaist NK have largely been economic ones,

Liu Jianchao, a senior Foreign Ministry official of China, Pyongyang's strongest ally, said Thursday that. . .it would not cut off economic assistance to Pyongyang. "China's economic assistance to North Korea is improving the living standards of its people," Jianchao said.  Novosti

Russia, who also opposed the stiffer sanction proposal, has not iterated the reasons for objecting to the current proposal over which it has expressed some dissatisfaction.

If the Russians are "running interference" for NK's nuclear program, like they're doing for Iran's, the question also remains -- why?.  Room for more speculation.

What we do know is this.  The North Korean bomb is a plutonium device (unlike the uranium program of Iran and Pakistan), like India's program.  Plutonium is easier to produce than enriched bomb-grade uranium but highly toxic and of far greater threat to the environment.  And, while it is short, Russia does share a common border with their crazy neighbor to the south.  Enough to have them worried about the potential hazard?

Finally,

North Korea maintains uranium mines with an estimated four million tons of exploitable high-quality uranium ore.
    <snip>
[NK has] trained specialists from students who had studied in the Soviet Union. Under the cooperation agreement concluded between the USSR and the DPRK, a nuclear research center was constructed near the small town of Yongbyon.
    <snip>
Estimates vary of both the amount of plutonium in North Korea's possession and number of nuclear weapons that could be manufactured from the material. South Korean, Japanese, and Russian intelligence estimates of the amount of plutonium separated, for example, are reported to be higher -- 7 to 22 kilograms, 16 to 24 kilograms, and 20 kilograms, respectively -- than the reported US estimate of about 12 kilograms.
    <snip>
. . .the amount of plutonium needed [to make a nuclear bomb is] 4 kilograms*. . .enough to make up to three bombs if the US estimate is used and up to six bombs if the other estimates are used.  FAS on WMD

(*Or, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1-3 kg., depending on the size weapon wanted and the technological skill of the manufacturer.  Difficulty is indirectly proportional to yield.)

Why would Russia wish to appear ignorant of the details surrounding NK's recent test and its nuclear program?  The best guess is to protect its intelligence assets.

One can hardly help speculating that Russia may have a well placed intelligence conduit in the NK nuclear program left over from the years until 1986 when it was the educator and advisor regarding that  program.  They may know, better than anyone else, how much weapons-grade plutonium NK has stockpiled, where that cache and the processing plant are, and how many bombs NK is capable of producing, once they get their design right.  Useful information they may wish to keep to themselves.

Nearly every country that has an estimate of NK's stockpile of plutonium has a different estimate.  No country is admitting to knowing where NK is caching and purifying its plutonium.  And to the rest of the world it only appears that NK may have wasted one bomb, or a portion of one.  The desire of everyone is to know the answers to these concerns.  And the Russians, who are most likely to know, aren't sharing.