New Russian Nuke Cuts Will Depend on U.S. Missile Defense Moves: Putin. PrintShareEmailTwitterFacebookLinkedIn Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said his government would only contemplate further bilateral nuclear arms reductions with the United States if issues with NATO's evolving ballistic missile shield are first handled, Reuters reported. Stemming the global spread of unconventional weapons is a "key issue on the world agenda," the Russian leader said, adding that Moscow's adherence to the New START accord with Washington shows just how dedicated Russia is to arms control. The treaty requires the United States and Russia by 2018 to each reduce deployment of strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 warheads and 700 delivery systems. President Obama has said he would like to open new bilateral arms control talks with Russia that would cover not only deployed long-range nuclear arms but also nonstrategic warheads and weapons held in storage.
Washington is also moving to bolster deployment of ballistic missile defenses in Asia and the Middle East. Russia Not Ready to Accept NATO Missile Defense Offer. PrintShareEmailTwitterFacebookLinkedIn Russia is not dismissing a NATO offer for collaboration on missile defense operations but is also not prepared to agree to the proposal, a high-ranking diplomat told Interfax last week (see GSN, Sept. 27). The NATO offer lacks several crucial elements, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said. "It is an important and far-reaching proposal, which we treaty very seriously," Grushko said. "Moreover, many of its elements are in tune with Russia's initiative to create a European missile defense shield. " "However, it is not clear today what the architecture of such a hypothetical missile defense system will look like, who will control it and how, what means it is expected to involve and in what direction it will develop," he added.
"We hope that in the end we will be able to agree upon parameters that would allow us to find concrete cooperation arrangements," the diplomat said. Grushko called for a "stage-by-stage approach" to address the differences. Missile Defense Cooperation with the Russian Federation. Global Security Newswire - NATO Missile Shield Needs to Include Russia, Medvedev Says. PrintShareEmailTwitterFacebookLinkedIn Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday said a planned European missile shield would be destabilizing and not viable if his nation does not participate in the system, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 10). Medvedev sent a letter to the leaders of each NATO member nation to clarify Moscow's stance on antimissile activities, the Kremlin said.
The letter indicates Moscow's deepening sense that it is being excluded in NATO talks on establishing a missile shield even though it seemed the two sides had made headway on the issue last November. At the time, Russia and the alliance agreed to embark on a joint research effort into areas for potential missile defense cooperation. The United States' "phased adaptive approach" for European missile defense would gradually field around the continent increasingly advanced sea- and land-based missile interceptors. The U.S. system would be folded into a broader NATO antimissile effort. Global Security Newswire - Ukraine, Russia Discussing Shared Missile Defense System. PrintShareEmailTwitterFacebookLinkedIn Russian space forces commander Lt.
Gen. Oleg Ostapenko on Tuesday said his nation and Ukraine are in discussions on a potential collaborative program to field ballistic missile defense technology, RIA Novosti reported (see GSN, Feb. 28). "We are currently in talks with the Ukrainian side on jointly resolving missile defense objectives," the military commander said without providing any other specifics. However, Moscow has no interest in renewing its usage of Ukraine's "obsolete" radars at Sevastopol and Mukacheve, he said (RIA Novosti, Oct. 4).
In February, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko said the country was interested in participating in NATO's planned missile defense architecture even though Ukraine is not a member of the alliance. Ohryzko said the radar stations at Mukacheve and Sevastopol could be his government's contribution to the missile shield, according to previous reports. "The station is fully operational.