GENEVA, January 10. /TASS/. Russia and the United States cannot discuss only the topic of the restoration of the INF Treaty as it is linked with other major matters, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday after the Russian-US consultations on security guarantees, commenting on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement on the restoration of agreements on intermediate and shorter-range missiles.
"We have stressed a dozen of times, probably, in our dialogue with the Americans that we insist on NATO’s non-expansion, on the non-deployment of offensive weapons near the Russian borders, on NATO’s returning to the status quo ante position as of 1997. And we insist that it be done in a legally binding form," he said. "Here, you see, there is an element of the refusal from deploying offensive weapons and the corresponding provisions are absolutely clearly worded in the text of the draft agreements that were posted on the foreign ministry’s website."
"So, I see no contradictions in what Russia wants and what was said by the US side. But, as usual, the question is what such an agreement would cover and how it can be worded, and, whether it would be an element, a part, a component of a broader solution to the series of key problems. Everything depends on that. We cannot focus on the topic of the INF Treaty only and address only it, although it is very important. The topic of intermediate and shorter-range missiles and the post-INF regime currently depends on other, more politically important matters," he said.
In an interview with ABC News ahead of the Russian-US security talks, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States and Russia could restore agreements on intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe.