Recent statements by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration that Washington is ready for nuclear talks without preconditions with Russia, China and North Korea are a “deception,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
“The call to talk about strategic stability, about control over nuclear weapons without preconditions is a deception,” Lavrov told the news outlet Argumenty I Fakty in remarks published early on Monday.
“What does ‘without preconditions’ mean? This means that the Americans reserve the right to declare us an enemy in their doctrinal documents.”
In a note to Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said it stood “ready to engage in talks with Russia, China, and North Korea without preconditions to reduce the nuclear threat.”
Lavrov said the statement means that Washington reserves the right to officially declare that its goal is to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia on the battlefield.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and its ongoing war there have triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union and the U.S. came close to nuclear war.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a special military operation, accusing Washington and its NATO partners of waging a hybrid war in Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow’s aggression is an unprovoked imperialistic attempt to grab land.
The 2-1/2-year-old war is entering its most dangerous phase, Moscow has said recently, as Russian forces advance in eastern Ukraine and the U.S. ponders allowing Kyiv to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles.
Within the past few weeks, Russia has lowered its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and warned Washington and its allies that their backing for Ukraine risks leading them into a direct conflict with Moscow that could turn nuclear.
In a wide ranging interview, Lavrov told the Argumenty I Fakty that Moscow is watching the U.S. election campaign between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.
“We are ready to work with any administration that the American people ultimately choose, but only if such a conversation is mutually respectful and equal,” Lavrov said.
“We are currently monitoring the election campaign in the US and at the moment we do not see any signs that we will return to such a conversation.”
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne)
