MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. A dialogue between Russia and the United States on activities in space is hardly possible, Research Director of the Valdai Discussion Club Foundation for Development and Support Fyodor Lukyanov told TASS on Saturday.
"I don’t see what the US interest in negotiating with Russia on space could be," he said. "It seems to me that meaningful talks on strategically important directions are ruled out at the moment. At this point and in the foreseeable future, the entire agenda will shift in another direction."
According to Lukyanov, "no qualitative changes in Russian-US relations should be expected" even when the global agenda will change, and the external policy will return to its traditional formats and issues.
"There are no grounds for that," the expert said.
He also said that it would be wrong to believe that the current novel coronavirus pandemic can break the previously existing tendencies in global politics. On the contrary, the crisis caused by the pandemic would only aggravate the existing tendencies.
"In other words, we will keep having what we already had, but in a sharper way, including all negative features [such as] rivalry [and] waiving of commitments. It will only be made even worse," Lukyanov added.
In his words, it is naive to believe that the tone of the Moscow-Washington dialogue would change. Moreover, he expressed doubt about feasibility of a project to create a Russian-US platform for talks on space issues.
"What’s the point in it, when it is clear that this will only lead to a yet another exchange of accusations. There is another issue, a lot more real and practical, which is strategic stability," the expert continued, saying that the matter of extending the Russian-US New START treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive arms is not yet closed.
"It does not even require any effort [to extend it]. All we need is to simply say ‘Let’s extend it and see.’ But this does not happen, and, apparently, will not happen," Lukyanov said.
Space issues
On April 6, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in support of the exploitation of off-Earth resources. Under the order, the United States doesn’t consider outer space as "global commons" and thus sees no need for further international agreements on that matter, such as the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, known as the Moon Treaty, that was adopted by a United Nations General Assembly resolution in December 1979.
Under the agreement, the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind and exploitation of such resources should be done exclusively for peaceful purposes and in the interests of all nations, regardless of their economic or scientific development.
In response, Moscow replied that any attempt by a single country to ‘privatize’ the outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, was unacceptable and ran counter to the existing international laws.
Later, the United Staes accused Russia of testing an anti-satellite missile with a capacity of direct interception at the low earth orbit. The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed those accusations as a yet another baseless anti-Russian insinuation. The ministry also citied an agreement reached during intra-departmental consultations on creating a platform for dialogue on a wide range of space security issues. Moscow believes that this is the only way to settle mutual claims in this domain.