Russia

Russian Foreign Ministry: US Manipulates Data Published Under New Start Treaty

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The United States is manipulating data it published under the under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), and the information shared by the US State Department does not comply with the treaty's rules for counting, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday.
Sputnik
"As for the attempts of Western countries to earn political points on information about the size of their nuclear potentials, then all this is frankly hypocritical," Ryabkov said in a statement, published by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
"Firstly, the declared figures are often fictitious or conditional. In particular, the US data on New START recently published by the US State Department continues to be misleading due to its inconsistency with the New START counting rules, which Washington is stubbornly trying to circumvent by unscrupulous manipulations."
Russia is transparent in nuclear matters and acts in a responsible manner, Ryabkov said, when asked about the G7 statement that claimed that only the Western nations are transparent when it comes to nuclear weapons.
"The data on the size of the arsenals of the United Kingdom and France are not verifiable at all and are purely declarative," the diplomat added.
He later emphasized that the West is trying to undermine China and Russia with their rhetoric on nuclear weapons.
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