Russian MFA publishes its response to US Report on Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments cc @russianforces, @SokovNikolai, @Joshua_Pollack, @meier_oliver, @atomicbell mid.ru/ru/foreign_pol… Thread 1/13
Russian MFA: US ignores Russian concern over missile defense despite accepting the interlink between offensive and defensive weapons in new START. US started work on missile defense against hypersonic weapons, which are limited to very few countries. 2/13
Russian MFA: US ignores Russian concerns over INF: MK-41 launchers in Europe could be used to launch INF-range missiles and possibility for violation in Asia-Pacific with supply of Aegis Ashore to Japan, also using missiles as targets and military drones cc @DavidSantoro1 3/13
Russian MFA: US says that Russian missile violates the INF but never explained how a missile which wasn’t designed as INF range and wasn’t tested for an INF range is a violation cc @RussianForces 4/13
Russian MFA: Russia maintains US joint nuclear missions with NATO countries violate the NPT, new NPR plans to expand this practice. Also, NPR doesn’t clearly reaffirm US commitments under the NPT. 5/13
Russian MFA: Russian military doctrine in its nuclear part is purposefully twisted to show alleged increase of reliance on nuclear weapons – this is not true. 6/13
Russian MFA: US reached new START limits not only by genuine cuts but also by manipulations: modif. of Trident launchers and B-52 bombers in way which Russia couldn’t verify as unusable + renaming “training launchers” as “training silos”, which is not defined by the treaty 7/13
Russian MFA: The numbers US cut in this way are comparable to nuclear forces of UK and France 8/13
Russian MFA: main reason Russia stopped implementing the Plutonium Disposition Agreement are US unfriendly actions. US must cut mil presence in Europe to levels of year 2000, scrap Magnistkiy law and Ukraine Freedom Support Act, lift all sanctions and pay compensations 9/13
There are other legitimate issues about PMDA, but I won’t go there since the former conditions will never be met 10/13
Russian MFA: US creating conditions for nuclear testing puts into question their commitment to moratorium on testing 11/13
Russian MFA: US creative interpretations of “significant forces” under NATO-Russia founding act and deploying heavy weapons to Europe are on the verge of violation of the document 12/13
There also are quite interesting explanations, accusations and counter-accusations about Open Skies Treaty and Vienna Document but I’m not really in the position to sum up, maybe @shakirov2036 will do a recap 13/13
