An arms race between Washington and Moscow “has already begun,” according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This is obvious,” the Kremlin boss told reporters, before blaming the United States for the competition. “Everything began after the U.S. pullout from the” Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Putin’s marathon annual press conference featured a litany of complaints about U.S. policy, which he portrayed as aggressive and anti-Russian. His protestations centered on George W. Bush’s withdrawal from a 2002 deal that banned the development of missile defenses, as well as NATO’s expansion to include eastern European countries that hope that their membership in the transatlantic alliance will deter any future Russian invasions.
“Compared to you, yes, it is a fact, we are harmless and squeaky-clean because we agreed to release from an unequivocal Soviet dictate those countries and nations that wanted to develop independently,” Putin told a BBC reporter, per a state media translation. “We heard your assurances that NATO won’t expand to the east, but you didn’t keep your promises.”
He delivered the broadside as negotiators try to secure an interim extension of a 2010 nuclear weapons treaty, the last remaining arms control deal after the collapse of other pacts due to Russian violations of the deals.
“Our partners withdrew from the treaty on long-range and medium-range missiles. Did we come out? No.” Putin said, in reference to the 1987 INF Treaty that barred intermediate-range land-based cruise missiles, which President Trump scrapped due to Russia’s illicit deployment of the banned missiles. The U.S. “withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty. What should we do in this regard? Will you, as a NATO member, fly over us and gather everything?”
Trump’s team exited the Open Skies Treaty last month, in response to Russia’s refusal to allow flights over its military exercises and to restrict surveillance over the Kaliningrad Oblast — a heavily armed, Russian-administered territory bordering NATO members Poland and Lithuania.
“The Open Skies Treaty was designed decades ago to increase transparency, cooperation, and mutual understanding,” Pentagon officials said earlier this year. “Instead, Russia has increasingly used the Treaty to support propaganda narratives in an attempt to justify Russian aggression against its neighbors and may use it for military targeting against the United States and our Allies.”
