GENEVA, January 25. /The Western countries are fiercely resisting the objective process of the world’s transition to a multipolar global order, which gives rise to new crises, Gennady Gatilov, Russian permanent representative to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva, said.
"Over the past year, the negative trends of the past decade have become even more evident," the diplomat told a conference on disarmament. "The countries of the ‘collective West’ led by the US are reacting increasingly fiercely to the objective and irreversible process of transitioning to a multipolar world order," he noted.
Gatilov emphasized that this process is accompanied by the escalation of longstanding conflicts and the emergence of new large-scale crisis situations sparked by "the desire of Western countries to impose the concept of a 'rules-based world order' as the sole, mandatory basis for building the modern world order in violation of the fundamental rules and principles of international law." "The new spiral of tensions in the Middle East provides yet further evidence of this state of affairs," Gatilov said.
The Western countries' confrontational course has manifested itself, among other things, in their attempts to achieve political and military superiority, Gatilov went on to say. To this end, "they have dealt a crushing blow to the system of international treaties in the field of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, and also moves have been made to destabilize the activities of such reputable international organizations as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," he said.
Washington, actively supported by its allies, has actually dismantled the system of international treaties on arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, he said. This has happened either through unilateral withdrawal from such treaties or through creating unacceptable conditions for the implementation of such agreements by their parties, as was the case with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START).
Russia's actions in this area "have always been taken in response to, carried out in compliance with the existing commitments and aimed solely at neutralizing the threats arising from the destructive policy of the ‘collective West,’" the diplomat pointed out. This is how Russia's withdrawal of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) or the decision to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus should be regarded, he noted.