MOSCOW, April 25. /TASS/. The so-called missile shield gives the United States a wrong feeling of impunity and pushes it to dangerous steps, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday, commenting on the US State Department’s 2017 Compliance Report.
"The risk is that the availability of a missile shield may give grounds for a vile feeling of invincibility and impunity and, hence, lure Washington into new dangerous unilateral steps to achieve its goals on the global and regional levels bypassing the United Nations Security Council and in the detriment of common sense, as it has already been done twice in respect of Syria by means of delivering missile strikes on this sovereign state under far-fetched pretexts," the ministry said.
The ministry added that the "irresponsible creation of the US missile shield system has a most negative influence on the system of the international security and seriously complicates relations not only in the Euro-Atlantic, but also in the Asia-Pacific regions."
It also "turned into one of the most serious barriers on the way to further step-by-step nuclear disarmament and creates dangerous preconditions for the resumption of the arms race."
Moscow has repeatedly tried to draw US attention to the problem, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"However, despite the formal recognition of a direct link between strategic offensive and defensive weapons (including in the text of the 2010 New START treaty), the US has still failed to demonstrate readiness to cooperate and take Russia’s concerns into account," the ministry said.
"One has to realize that missile defense elements, deployed worldwide, are a part of a dangerous global project to ensure total US military advantage to the detriment of security interests of other nations," the statement reads. "Active buildup of the US missile shield systems altogether changes the strategic balance of forces in offensive weapons, and in principle creates more and more serious risks of global instability.".