Paul Armstrong
CNN

Russia's top drugs adviser has called on the United States to use its troop surge into Afghanistan to help stem the flow of drugs entering its borders, as heroin addiction reaches epidemic levels.

Last week President Barack Obama announced plans to send an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to the region in an effort to stabilize the Afghan government by defeating the Taliban, who are believed to be heavily involved in the country's burgeoning drugs trade.

However the strategy of destroying the poppy fields of southern Afghanistan, which yield the heroin flooding out of the country, is now viewed as counterproductive by the U.S.-led coalition because it drives farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

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The Empire State Building is set to reduce its energy output by 38 percent.

Asia Lindsay
AC360º Intern

Having just arrived in New York City, fresh from Manchester, England, and being the kind of person who carpools elevators, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of environmental consciousness in The Big Apple.

Take the Empire State Building, for instance. It is one of my (and America’s) favorite buildings, is famous for its romantic depiction in countless films, and it can now add tackling climate change to its impressive resume.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Bill Clinton’s Climate Initiative (CCI) and, of course, the Empire State Building Company have joined forces for the $500 million renovation to make the iconic building more eco-friendly. The project will also aim to boost the building’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) status to Gold – the highest rating in the green building industry. Keep reading

A Moscow merchant displays Russian nesting dolls painted with portraits of Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev.

Jill Dougherty
CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent

It was a catchy phrase when U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden first used it in February: "Press the reset button." A month later U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed her counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a red plastic "reset" button. The Russian translation printed on top turned out to be wrong, but by that time Russians were using the phrase, too.

The only problem was no one seemed to know precisely what "resetting" the U.S. relationship really meant. During the Cold War, if you talked about Russian and U.S. presidents pressing buttons, it usually meant potentially blowing up the world with nuclear weapons.

Now, at this two-day summit in Moscow between presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev which begins Monday, we'll get to see whether this "reset" button actually sets a new, cooperative relationship in motion or whether it's short-circuited.

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President Obama prepares to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow on Monday.

Ed Henry
CNN Senior White House Correspondent

President Obama arrived in Moscow on Monday for a summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev aimed at trying to "reset" the U.S.-Russian relationship. But he also may have a less publicized goal: figuring out who's really in charge here.

When Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, engaged in his first summit with his Russian counterpart, things took an odd turn. Bush said — now infamously — that he looked into then-President Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw into his soul, and basically found he was a good guy that Americans could do business with. Oops. The Bush-Putin relationship ended up getting pretty chilly, which is why the new U.S. president is now trying to warm things up.

Obama gets his first shot at literally looking into Putin's eyes Tuesday, when he has a sitdown with the man who is now prime minister of Russia, a post that many international analysts believe allows Putin to continue to pull the strings behind the scenes.

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President Obama and his family arrive in Moscow on Monday.

Spencer P. Boyer and James D. Lamond
The Root

Today, President Barack Obama arrives in Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, for a three-day summit. It will be their first face-to-face exchange since meeting in London in early April, when Obama was in Europe for the G-20 and NATO summits. After a frosty U.S.-Russian relationship during most of President George W. Bush’s term in office, this summit offers an opportunity to show Russia and the rest of the world that the new U.S. administration is serious about making a fresh start and is willing to put some substance behind that much-talked-about “reset button.”

While Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and missile defense will be on the summit agenda, the main issue will be replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which is set to expire in December. President George H.W. Bush signed START in 1991, after nearly a decade of negotiations led by the Reagan administration. The treaty significantly slashed warhead deployments in both countries and is largely credited with reducing Cold War-era nuclear tension. At home, START has long been a bipartisan goal, with support from both Democratic and Republican foreign policy experts.

A replacement treaty would mark the first time in almost two decades that the two countries, whose arsenals make up more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, have negotiated a binding and verifiable agreement to reduce their nuclear arms. Such a treaty would facilitate the reduction of nuclear stockpiles and help secure existing Russian nuclear material. A reduction in nuclear stockpiles would, in turn, reduce the risk of theft or illicit sale to criminal or terrorist networks. It would also reduce the risk of an accidental launch, like we almost saw in 1995 when Russia mistook a Norwegian weather satellite for a nuclear attack and almost started a nuclear war. Furthermore, without START, the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) would be gutted because it depends on the verification mechanisms of START. In other words, it’s a big deal.

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and President Obama talk on April 1 in London.

Paul Starobin
Special to CNN

Barack Obama often seems to have much of the planet at his feet in rapt attention to his every word.

But the president as global oracle is about to meet his stony match - in the vast and barren place that proved a graveyard for Napoleon and that has an ingrained suspicion of foreigners as an abiding quality of its cultural DNA.

That place, of course, is Russia, which Obama plans to visit this month. The president will find a Kremlin amenable to doing business with him on traditional diplomatic matters like reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, so long as Moscow is convinced the deal is an even one.

But if Obama, more ambitiously, hopes to win over the hearts of the Russian people - along the lines of his recent Cairo address, pitched over the heads of the governments of the Islamic world and straight at their citizenry - he can expect to leave disappointed.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Jill Dougherty

U.S.-Russian relations “seriously deteriorated” late last year but don’t blame Moscow. That’s how Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sees it.

“The choice has not been ours,” he says in a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. “The plans of the previous U.S. administration have carried with them a serious damage to Russia’s security, security interests, and if realized would inevitably demand our response.”

Among other things, Lavrov points to U.S. plans to install a strategic missile defense system in Eastern Europe, the “hectic, unjustified” NATO expansion and “attempts to punish Russia” after its brief war with Georgia in August of last year.

If Russia and the United States are serious about “resetting” their relations they have to “get rid of the toxic assets, he says.

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