Совместная Американско-Российская Комиссия по Делам Военнопленных и Пропавших без Вести: О Нас и Наши Координаты
The United States-Russia Joint Commission (USRJC) was established in March 1992 by direction of the presidents of the United States and the Russian Federation. The commission serves as a forum through which both nations seek to determine the fates of their missing servicemen. DPMO provides direct analytical, investigative, and administrative support to the USRJC through the Joint Commission Support Directorate.
The commission's objectives are: to determine whether American servicemen are being held against their will on the territory of the former Soviet Union and, if so, to secure their immediate release and repatriation; to locate and return to the United States the remains of any deceased American servicemen interred in the former Soviet Union, and to ascertain the facts regarding American servicemen who were not repatriated and whose fates remain unresolved.
The commission is organized into four working groups, each representing a key area of investigation. These groups encompass World War II; the Korean War; the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. As applied in the context of the commission's work, the term Cold War refers to 10 loss incidents of U.S. military aircraft between April 8, 1950, and December 14, 1965. From the perspective of Russian losses, the Cold War encompasses Soviet military personnel unaccounted-for from Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. The Cold War group also engages in research on the Soviet GULag, the Stalin-era system of forced labor and prison camps, to seek an explanation for the substantial number of reports about U.S. servicemen taken to, and held within, the camps and other detention facilities of the former Soviet Union.
The commission meets in plenary session generally once per year. To date, 19 such sessions have been held, 17 in Moscow and two in Washington, D.C. The commission's most recent plenum was held in Moscow in June 2005. The plenary schedule has been augmented by a series of working group sessions held to define agenda topics and to advance priority areas of inquiry.
General Foglesong, U.S. Chairman, and then newly-appointed Russian Chairman, General-Colonel Reznik, at their first meeting in the Russian Ministry of Defense, Moscow, Russia, December 4, 2007. General Reznik passed away one year later, and the position of Russian Chairman currently is vacant.
The commission’s U.S. Chairman, General Robert “Doc” Foglesong, has met with his Russian counterpart three times—twice in Moscow and once in Washington—since his appointment by President George W. Bush in April 2006. His main objectives have been to urge the Russians to restore their side of the commission, which was effectively eliminated in June 2004, and to review the commission’s work and set the direction for its efforts. Although the Russians have consistently promised they would restore cooperation on the POW/MIA issue through the Joint Commission, they have not done so as of February 2009. The U.S. side still awaits Russian movement in this direction.
General Foglesong’s last trip to Moscow was in December 2007, when he met with General Reznik and pressed him to accelerate the process of agreeing on the text of a diplomatic note that would be the legal basis in Russia for the commission’s restoration, and to re-authorize direct access by U.S. researchers to important Russian archives that hold fate-clarifying information on missing American servicemen. The Russians had withdrawn such access in October 2006, and the U.S. side has pressed hard for its return to these vitally important archival collections.
Meanwhile, the commission’s U.S. side continues its cooperation with Russian and Ukrainian veterans’ groups, and its efforts to widen access to critical non-Russian archives and to generate archival research contracts with other nations in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central Europe are moving forward. Its program of field research and interviews with war veterans also continues in the region. Our office in the American Embassy Moscow engages in routine liaison with Russian officials, including governmental, military, archival, and non-governmental officials and media representatives. The office’s effort to reach out to the Russian and FSU publics is a vitally important element of its mission, and Russian representatives of the mass media continue to express interest in, and publish articles about, U.S. initiatives to account for missing service members. While the U.S. side awaits the formal restoration of the commission’s Russian side, it also has renewed research into the Soviet-era GULag system and the numerous reports that American military servicemen were incarcerated in this prison camp system.
Recognizing the value of increased cooperation with East European countries, and endeavoring to keep the commission’s work moving forward in the absence of close Russian cooperation, the U.S. side of the commission has established contact with a number of officials in the former Warsaw Pact nations. In calendar year 2008, the commission’s support staff visited Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Albania and will build upon these relationships in 2009. These efforts have resulted in productive discussions with governmental officials, non-governmental organizations, and press representatives, as well as with private citizens sympathetic to the commission's goals and objectives. The dialogue already begun has generated a number of archival research and interview programs and has led to successful field investigations in this region. These efforts have provided us with important information about the fates of missing American servicemen, particularly from World War II.
JCSD Products:
Visit by General Robert H. “Doc” Foglesong -- December 3-6, 2007 (posted 06 May 2009)
Speech by A. Denis Clift -- Jan 18, 2007
Visit by General Robert H. “Doc” Foglesong -- September 25-29, 2006 (posted 21 November 2006)
19th Plenum of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs -- June 28-29, 2005 Moscow (posted 27 July 2005 )
Visit to Moscow, Russian Federation by Honorable Jerry D. Jennings September 19-23, 2004 (posted 04 October 2004)
U.S.-Russia Archival Conference April 13-15, 2004 After Action Report (posted 14 May 2004)
Visit to Moscow, Russian Federation, of Honorable Jerry D. JenningsDeputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Prisoners of War/Missing Personnel Affairs) September 9 – 13, 2003 (posted 20 October 2003)
Meeting of Commissioners Cold War Working Group - U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, 16 April 2003 (posted 15 May 2003)
Congressman Johnson's Trip to Moscow and Eastern Europe, January 2003 (posted March 7, 2003)
Изучение ГУЛАГа (5-ое Издание, 11 февраля 2005 года)
Доклад Совместной российско-американской комиссии по делам военнопленных и пропавших без вести (апрель 2001 года)
