MOSCOW, July 21. /TASS/. Russia is not ready to engage in arms control talks in the manner offered by the United States, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters on Friday after attending the annual meeting of friends of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.
According to Ryabkov, Russia has not received any written proposals from the United States concerning the restart of arms control talks.
"No, we have not received a written proposal in the form you may mean, a non-paper or a note or a personal letter. However, we have certainly studied the US national security adviser’s statement on this issue. And we have also made our corresponding comments," Ryabkov pointed out in response to a question.
"I would like to say that we are not ready to and will not conduct this dialogue based on what the Americans are now proposing, as they ignore several key points in this entire configuration," Ryabkov said.
"We must first and foremost make sure that the US policy, which is fundamentally hostile toward Russia, is changing for the better for us. That is far from happening now and, I would rather say that the opposite is going on. Not only is the anti-Russian component dominant, but it is also being exacerbated in America’s policy, going way beyond all conceivable lines and creating risks. It is one side of this," he said.
The deputy foreign minister continued, saying that the other side is that Russia cannot "discuss arms control issues in the mode of so-called compartmentalization," which means singling out from the whole range of issues some pressing ones which are of interest to the United States, and pushing to oblivion or taking off the table other points that are theoretically as important to Russia as those of interest to the Americans.".