Russian Forces to Provide Security at US Events?

Are Russian officials going to provide “security at mass events” in the United States? Today we’ll take a look at this claim a little more closely.

The claim is untrue.

This assertion has been suggested by an article on InfoWars. The article begins:

As part of a deal signed last week in Washington DC between the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and FEMA, Russian officials will provide “security at mass events” in the United States, a scenario that won’t sit well with Americans wary of foreign assets operating on US soil.

The source for this article is a press release dated June 26, 2013 from the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense and Emergencies. While Infowars has characterized this as “security at mass events” the full text of the press release obviously relates to specifically to disaster response and emergency situations. The press release is begins:

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and the USA Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are going to exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters…The document provides for expert cooperation in disaster response operations and to study the latest practices.

Though “security at mass events” is referenced in the press release, it’s clear from reading the entire document that this is referring to emergency situations.

In addition, the parties approved of U.S.-Russian cooperation in this field in 2013-2014, which envisages exchange of experience including in monitoring and forecasting emergency situations, training of rescuers, development of mine-rescuing and provision of security at mass events.

At the end of the meeting the parties expressed their satisfaction with the level of cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States in the area of emergency prevention and response and agreed to develop it in order to respond efficiently to all kinds of disasters.

Bottom Line

Russian forces will not be providing security at events in the US as characterized in the Infowars article. The original press release discussed cooperation relating to disaster situations and has been taken out of context.

Sources

• Several documents signed during joint work of Russian Emergency Ministry and FEMA (EMERCOM of Russia: June 26, 2013)
• Russian Forces to Provide “Security” At US Events (Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars: July 1, 2013)