The North Atlantic Alliance has de facto turned into a participant in the Ukrainian conflict and is no longer acting as a conventional adversary, but as an enemy of Russia. This opinion was expressed in an interview with Izvestia by presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Answering the question about the reasons for Russia's suspension of participation in START, the Kremlin spokesperson noted that the situation for Russia has changed drastically since the adoption of this document. According to Peskov, "NATO has de facto turned into a party to the conflict in Ukraine."
"In fact, NATO is no longer acting as our conditional adversaries, but as our enemies. Their intelligence is working against us 24 hours a day, their weapons, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin stressed in a recent interview, are supplied to Ukraine for free and shooting at our military - I am not even talking about shooting at Ukrainian citizens, shelling Ukrainian cities and villages - commitments are taken and collective decisions are made within NATO on new deliveries, on new batches of weapons with a constant increase in their technical level," the presidential spokesman said.
Peskov called the START the only "more or less alive" document in the field of arms control and strategic security, recalling at the same time the exhaustive explanations of the decision to suspend Russia's participation in this agreement by Vladimir Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly. The spokesman stressed that during the preparation of the treaty the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain and France were not taken into account, although they are not comparable in their power and volume to Russia and the US, "but they are quite significant for the entire system of European strategic security."
However, according to the Kremlin spokesman, the United States, Britain and France are members of the same organization, which is now in direct armed confrontation with Russia. Peskov explained this by supplying weapons to Kiev, urging "to call things by their proper names." At the same time, he noted the sensitivity of Western countries in this area due to the repetition of their statements about their unwillingness to be parties to the conflict in Ukraine.
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Photo: NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organiza/Creative Commons 2.0
Based on materials from TASS