Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov has criticized Washington’s threat to expand its nuclear arsenal
The US is attempting “to lecture” Russia and China on nuclear weapons while itself pursuing a “deeply hostile” policy, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said on Thursday.
His comments came after the US acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy, Vipin Narang, warned that Washington finds itself “in nothing short of a new nuclear age,” adding that it must “prepare for a world where constraints on nuclear weapons arsenals disappear entirely.”
“Revisionist nuclear challengers” have forced the US to shift to a “more competitive approach,” Narang claimed in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday. He cited Chinese nuclear armament, Russian and North Korean cooperation, and alleged Russian nuclear anti-satellite weapon development as the reasons for the shift.
Antonov condemned the speech as “innuendos about Russia’s allegedly irresponsible behavior in the nuclear sphere,” adding that this type of rhetoric does little to contribute to “improving the situation in the sphere of strategic security.”
Washington is “once again trying to teach” Russia and China the “right behavior,” the diplomat added. “Otherwise, they threaten the advent of a new ‘nuclear age’ in which the United States will not be able to restrain the growth of its own nuclear arsenal.”
The US also continues to “pump” Ukraine with more and more weapons amid the conflict with Russia, including fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons, Antonov stated, describing the policy as “deeply hostile.”
It will not be possible to achieve cooperation with Moscow while attempting to inflict a “strategic defeat” against it, the envoy warned. Antonov also accused Washington of “silencing the inconvenient truth about the more than two decades of US strikes against the entire architecture of international arms control.”
The US withdrew from two security treaties – the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies – under the administration of Donald Trump. While the White House under President Joe Biden has extended the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) through 2026, last year Moscow suspended its participation, citing the US role in the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow “will continue to be guided solely by national interests, without the consideration of which it will be impossible to build a Russian-American dialogue on arms control,” Antonov underscored.
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