UNITED NATIONS. April 10. /TASS/. The United States and its allies are putting the pressure on other countries in an effort to force them to violate agreements with Russia and export their Soviet-era weapons to Ukraine, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Monday.
"Secret weapons supplies to these or those regions via third countries distort the picture of weapons flows in the world and reduce transparency in this sphere," he said at a meeting of the UN Security Council on risks stemming from violations of agreements on supplies of military products.
"Regrettably, Western countries are not only ignoring such violations but are encouraging them. The United States and its allies are exerting pressure on third countries demanding they violate such agreements with Russia and other states in the interests of expanded weapons supplies to Kiev," he stressed.
The Russian diplomat recalled that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last November that enterprises in Eastern European countries had resumed the production of Soviet-era combat systems whereas intergovernmental agreements with these countries prohibit exports of such products without the former Soviet Union’s or Russia’s, as its legal successor, written consent. "This means that such actions constitute a blatant violation of the fundamental international norms of conventional arms control, regardless of the purpose behind them," Nebenzya added.