The arms race is not Russia’s fault, but it is still going on, Putin is sure. In a statement following the talks in Geneva, the Presidents of Russia and the United States said that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war”.
Vladimir Putin
There is an arms race in the world, although it was not initiated by Russia, President Vladimir Putin said. According to him, the issue of deterring the arms race refers to topics that are of “absolute priority and interest” for both Russia and the United States, RIA Novosti reports
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We have also identified the areas or points where we can talk about a possible future convergence of positions. There are things that are of absolute priority and interest to both us and the United States… This is a problem of deterring the arms race, which, unfortunately, is not actually on our initiative, it is going on covertly or openly, ” the president said during a meeting with graduates of the fourth stream of the program for the development of the personnel management reserve of the Higher School of Public Administration.
Following the talks in Geneva, Putin and Biden signed a joint statement confirming the commitment of Russia and the United States to strategic arms control. The document states that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war”, so the countries intend to launch a bilateral dialogue on this issue.
Moscow has repeatedly and at various levels spoken out about the danger of an arms race, and discussions on this topic have become particularly acute in connection with the termination of the Treaty on the Elimination of Short-and Medium-Range Missiles (INF) in 2019.
Then Putin, in an interview with Al Arabiya, Sky New Arabia and RT Arabic TV channels, expressed hope that the arms race would not lead to a new cold war, but assured that Russia would be affected to the least extent.
“I didn’t want to be in the [Cold War]. In any case, Russia will be the least affected by this, because, as I have already said, we have promising types of weapons, absolutely exclusive, which no one in the world has yet, ” Putin said at the time. He added that Russia is in seventh place in defense spending, behind the United States, Saudi Arabia, China, Great Britain, France, and Japan, and has weapons that other countries do not have. At the same time, the president noted that Russia will not be drawn into exorbitant budget expenditures.
Putin agreed then, we can talk “one way or another about a certain arms race”. “This is already an established fact. Unfortunately, this is the case, ” he added.
Immediately after the withdrawal from the INF Treaty, the then Deputy Press Secretary of the White House, Hogan Gidley, said that the United States was not afraid of a new arms race because of the withdrawal from the treaty. A White House official then referred to President Donald Trump’s “good relationship” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the collapse of the INF Treaty is an additional factor for increasing the spending of the alliance countries on defense. According to him, NATO has already begun deploying its forces in Europe in response to the termination of the treaty. At the same time, Stoltenberg noted that the United States wants to avoid a new arms race and seeks to restore relations with Russia.