Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his press conference after Russian-Vietnamese talks on June 20, 2024 in Moscow, Russia.
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Russia is ready to hold security talks with NATO countries, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, while reaffirming Moscow’s intention to expand its national nuclear arsenal.
Turning to security in the Eurasian region, Putin said on Friday that the Kremlin was “ready for a broad international discussion of these important and important issues – both with our colleagues in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the CIS, the EAEU, the BRICS- States as well as with other international associations – including European and NATO states,” says a Google-translated report from the Russian state news agency Tass.
“Of course, if they are ready,” the Russian president added at a meeting with graduates of the military university.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had previously signaled that Russia’s willingness to hold security talks with the USA was explicitly dependent on simultaneous talks about the war in Ukraine.
“We are open to dialogue, but to a broad, comprehensive dialogue that covers all dimensions, including the dimension related to the conflict over Ukraine and the involvement of the United States in this conflict,” Peskov said, according to a Google translated statement Tass report.
His comments came in response to the possibility of holding talks with Washington on nuclear risks outside the Ukraine conflict. CNBC reached out to the US State Department and asked whether the White House would be willing to negotiate on these terms.
Russia has so far been largely isolated from Western-led diplomacy to resolve the conflict with Kiev – and most recently was not invited to the peace summit in Ukraine on June 15th and 16th.
Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said separately in a Google-translated Telegram update that talks on a new treaty limiting nuclear firepower with the United States would only be possible if Washington stops supplying weapons to Ukraine and blocks its entry into NATO .
Moscow has repeatedly cited Kiev’s ambitions to join the Western-led military alliance as a threat to its own security and as one of the reasons for Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, raising active conflict wages in its territories.
“Everything should develop according to a completely different scenario,” Medvedev wrote, imagining a scenario in which the US would fall into a state of “total psychosis” out of fear of Russian bomb and missile attacks.
“May all their elite be worried! May she tremble and tremble,” he added.
The prospect of nuclear escalation has weighed heavily on the NATO alliance’s tactical decisions as it considers the next steps in its support for Kiev. Russia, which inherited the vast majority of the collapsed Soviet Union’s weapons of mass destruction, has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, according to the Federation of American Scientists – with a total stockpile of 5,580 warheads as of March between military stockpiles and reserves. In comparison, the USA has a total inventory of 5,044 warheads.
“We plan to further develop the nuclear triad as a guarantee of strategic deterrence and to maintain the balance of power in the world,” Putin said on Friday, according to Reuters. The so-called “nuclear triad” refers to Russia’s ability to fire nuclear missiles from land, sea and air.
In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in the important New START nuclear agreement with the USA without completely withdrawing his country from the agreement. The agreement, which came into force in 2011 and was extended for another five years in 2021, required Russia and the United States to deploy no more than 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles and a maximum of 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads.
The agreement also called for up to 18 annual inspections of both countries’ strategic nuclear weapons sites to verify compliance.
Since suspending its participation in the treaty, Russia has rejected U.S. proposals for a dialogue on nuclear arms control, while the White House continues to provide military support to Ukraine.
“We do not see the slightest interest on the part of the United States or NATO in resolving the Ukraine conflict and listening to Russia’s concerns,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a news conference in January, according to Reuters.
Putin ratcheted up the war rhetoric and warned NATO this year of the possibility of a nuclear conflict if the coalition pushed through a proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron to station Western troops in Ukraine.
″[The West] must realize that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don’t they understand?” Putin said in his annual State of the Union address in February.
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2024-06-21 14:17:21
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