"American officials are declaring their alleged desire to enter into arms control discussions with Russia without preconditions but they clearly did not bother to read the February 29 address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly, which has our fundamental assessments of this kind of hypocrisy and demagogy amid Washington’s desire to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia," the ministry said.
Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the United States stands ready to engage in bilateral arms control talks with China and Russia without any preconditions.
"The United States is willing to engage in bilateral arms control discussions with Russia and China right now, without preconditions. All they have to do is say 'yes' and come to the table in good faith," Thomas-Greenfield said during a UN Security Council meeting.
Russia’s policy has not changed, and the country is ready to discuss arms control altogether with focus on issues that directly involve Moscow’s security interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.
"In the meantime, we are invited to conduct dialogue exclusively on US terms and only on those issues that are of interest to Washington," the ministry said.
Deputy Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy in turn said that the strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States on arms control is only possible if the US and NATO revise their anti-Russian course.
“Any interaction will only be possible if the United States and NATO review their anti-Russian course and when they show that they are ready to participate in comprehensive dialogue taking into account all of our strategic stability factors and removing all of the concerns that we have,” Polyanskiy said at the UN Security Council meeting.
He stressed that the strategic dialogue between the US and the Russian Federation cannot be separated from the general and military context.
At the same time Russia stands ready to negotiate on the issue of nuclear disarmament with interested countries during the new Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) Review conference, Polyanskiy added.
"We expect that our Western colleagues will abandon their very dangerous and destructive course. We are open within the new NPT Review conference to a constructive dialogue with all countries interested in reaching a consensus understanding on how we can create preconditions for further nuclear disarmament," he said.