TASS military observer Viktor Litovkin on Tuesday, October 20, commented on the statement of Pentagon chief Mark Esper about Washington’s readiness to increase the number of intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe and Asia.
According to the expert, this is not the first call, and the Cold War has been going on for a long time, starting with economic sanctions against Russia, ending with the fact that “the United States regularly withdraws from all disarmament treaties, from treaties that emphasized trust in each other, allowed inspecting each other. friend. “
According to Litovkin, the agreement to extend the START-3 treaty for a year and then resolve the issue of freezing nuclear weapons is unlikely to lead to the end of the Cold War, since there will be competition between the United States and Russia, between the United States and China, as happens between the leading states of the world.
The expert pointed out that in order to have an information advantage, the United States continues to lie about Russian missiles.
“Since the Americans continued to create such missiles, they created systems for their deployment in Europe, the first system was the Aegis system, in the launch tubes of which it was possible to put medium-range cruise missiles – Tomahawks – which fly 2,500 km. In order to legalize this and to create new missiles, they accused Russia of violating the treaty, “the military observer noted.
At the moment, the head of the US military department is revealing plans to deploy missiles in Europe and Asia, and before that, Litovkin recalled, the United States and NATO argued that there would be no such missiles in Europe.
“Then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the missiles that will be deployed in Europe will be without nuclear warheads. We must expect that the Americans and the NATO Secretary General will say that since Russia does not agree to disarmament, which will be beneficial to NATO and the United States, then we will deploy missiles with nuclear warheads. That is, the Americans and NATO are swindlers who want through negotiations, through an information campaign, to gain a military advantage over Russia, and then over China, ”the expert said.
Earlier on October 20, the head of the press service of the US State Department, Morgan Ortagus, announced that the US was ready to meet with representatives of Russia to finalize the agreement on the extension of the START Treaty.
On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Russia’s readiness, if START is extended for a year, together with the American side, to freeze the number of nuclear warheads for this period in the absence of additional US requirements.
On October 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed extending the START Treaty for at least a year without additional conditions. In his opinion, the extra time makes it possible to conduct meaningful negotiations. However, the United States then refused this offer.
In 2021, the Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms, signed between Russia and the United States in 2010, will expire.
The Russian Federation insists on extending the agreement, but the United States puts forward a number of demands, including China’s participation in the new agreement. Beijing, on the other hand, indicates that there is no reason to participate in the negotiations, since its nuclear arsenal is much smaller than that of the United States.