Contrary to the fears of Russian conservatives and hopes of, should we say, less conservative Russians, no serious progress on on taxes and liabilities was made during the Bratislava summit (although the summit statement mentions some important joint projects). Which is not necessarily a bad thing - given the suspicion with which a concrete agreement would have been treated in Russia, extra attention could easily do more harm than good. Besides, the times when success depended on political declarations and summit meetings are long over - the ability to make bureaucracies work is much more important these days.

Here is an example of how things can quietly work - in 2004 first money of the estimated $350m went into construction of power plants in Seversk (Tomsk-7) and Zheleznogorsk (Krasnoyarsk-26), which will replace the plutonium production reactors. Rosatom just announced that this will allow it to shut down these reactors in 2007-2008.