MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. The United States has practically destroyed traditional control over weapons, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Friday.
"Traditional control over weapons has been practically destroyed by the Americans," he said in a video address to the participants of an international conference marking the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
According to the senior diplomat, Russia hoped to achieve results in this direction after the meeting of Russian and American leaders last summer in Geneva.
"The presidents reaffirmed the well-known formula that there can be no winners in a nuclear war, so it should never be unleashed. Six months later, this maxim was echoed by the entire nuclear five in a joint statement by its leaders. Besides that, at the Geneva meeting of the presidents, bilateral talks on strategic stability were launched," he said.
Ryabkov recalled that after these events, the American side halted discussions on strategic stability, and then rejected draft security guarantees for the Russian Federation.
"After several rounds, the Americans stopped suddenly, ignoring our ideas about developing a new security balance, and then rejected the Russian initiative for legally binding security guarantees, including not expanding NATO, not deploying strike weapons near Russia’s borders, and returning the alliance's structure to 1997 conditions," he concluded.