Moscow, Oct 22 : White House national security advisor John Bolton on Monday began two days of meetings with senior Russian officials following Washington’s weekend announcement of its withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty.
The Moscow visit by Bolton was planned before the Saturday announcement by President Donald Trump that the US was ditching the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF, a move Moscow has already denounced as “dangerous.”
The treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles was signed in 1987 by then US president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who on Sunday said that “dropping these agreements… shows a lack of wisdom” and was a “mistake”.
Bolton arrived in Russia Sunday and is set to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
On Monday morning he met his Russian counterpart, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
On Tuesday he may also speak about the treaty with President Vladimir Putin, according to Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said the Russian leader was looking for “clarifications” about US intentions.
Peskov told journalists Monday that ditching the treaty “will make the world more dangerous” and rejected US claims Moscow has violated the pact, instead accusing Washington of doing so.
“It is the United States that is eroding the foundations and main elements of this pact” with its missile defense capabilities and drones, he said.
But Trump on Saturday claimed Russia had long violated the treaty.
