Moscow:
Against a backdrop of lack of trust in the West, Russia plans to strengthen ties with India, among other countries. Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov has accused the United States of inciting global conflict and abandoning key Cold War arms control treaties, saying Moscow has “a minimum amount of trust” in the West. He said it was “impossible.”
Russia’s top military commander claims that any efforts to reach a meaningful agreement on arms control is hampered by “double standards” in the West, and the lack of trust between Russia and the West makes the issue He said that it has become irrelevant to current international relations.
Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, have expressed regret over the collapse of a tangle of arms control treaties aimed at slowing an arms race and reducing the risk of nuclear war.
According to a Reuters report, Gerasimov said: “The topic of arms control as a whole remains a story of the past, because today it is impossible to return to a minimum level of trust due to the double standards of the Western countries. “There is,” he said.
Russia’s top commander said his government would develop ties with China, India, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela because it does not trust the United States and other Western countries.
“Without trust, it is impossible to create effective mechanisms for mutual control,” he said, according to the Defense Ministry.
“Many countries are beginning to consider appropriate responses,” he added.
The United States, which ranks Russia and China as the biggest nation-state threats to the West, blames Russia for the collapse of treaties such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. I am doing it.
The United States formally withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, citing Russia’s violations, but the Russian government denied this. The United States withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002.
In 2023, President Vladimir Putin condemned U.S. support for Ukraine and suspended Russia’s participation in the New START treaty, which limits both countries’ strategic nuclear weapons. But Russia, like the United States, has abided by the limits on warheads, missiles, and bombers imposed by the agreement.
Gerasimov said U.S. missile deployments in Europe and Asia are creating a “strategic-offensive arms race” and that the U.S. military buildup in the Philippines is of particular concern to Russia.
He said Russia was seeing increased activity by the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance near Russia’s borders. The US has become a direct participant in the Ukraine conflict after Ukraine attacked Russian territory with long-range missiles supplied by the US last month, the general added.
