Nuke arms talks with US necessary but not ready to be lectured: Kremlin

MOSCOW, November 8

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that strategic dialogue with the United States over nuclear weapons was “definitely necessary” but that such talks could not happen while Washington was “lecturing” Moscow.

Russia and the United States, by far the biggest nuclear powers, have both expressed regret about the steady disintegration of arms control treaties which sought to slow the Cold War arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear war. Russia on Tuesday formally withdrew from a landmark security treaty which limited key categories of conventional armed forces, citing what it regarded as the unacceptable expansion of the NATO military alliance. NATO said its members would suspend the same treaty’s operation in response.

When asked about the prospect of strategic dialogue on nuclear weapons with the United States and the West, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Dialogue is unequivocally necessary. (But) it cannot take place in a situation where one country lectures another country. We do not accept such a situation.

“But we believe that dialogue is essential. And we are certainly ready to start it. But so far the actual situation has not changed in any way.”

The war in Ukraine has triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War, though the architecture of post-Cold War security was already crumbling before the conflict. — Reuters