MOSCOW, February 8. /TASS/. Russia will not conduct a dialog on strategic stability with the United States under conditions of unilateral advantages, Vladimir Yermakov, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, has told TASS in an interview.

"Now the Americans in their typical utilitarian and consumerist manner recall bilateral arms control only in regard to those aspects which are beneficial for them and promise unilateral advantages," he said. "However, until Washington changes its profoundly anti-Russian policy in the security area, we will not talk arms control with the United States. And that was made clear to them."

Yermakov pointed out that "the state of affairs in the arms control area directly depends on the general situation in the field of international security and strategic stability, which is increasingly deteriorating."

"In this regard, many do tend to focus their attention on things associated with Russia’s former array of agreements with the United States, which have been seriously affected by the transformations occurring around the world in recent decades," he said. "The reasons for this are clear: the talk was about cooperation between two major nuclear powers."

According to the diplomat, the underpinning of such negative processes is also obvious: "At a certain historical point, the US imagined that it was capable of safeguarding its crucial military superiority and, supported by its allies, it began to crush everything in its way." He recalled that this is how the Americans dismantled the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) and the Treaty on Open Skies.

"Simultaneously, in the attempt to undermine the security of those who refused to succumb to the West’s diktat, Washington has imposed such conditions that made the implementation of a number of agreements meaningless for the other party. That is why Russia was forced to eventually pull out of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty) and to suspend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START)," Yermakov concluded.