On Saturday, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said that the dialogue between his country and the United States of America (USA) on strategic issues was officially "frozen".
The TASS Russian news agency quoted Vladimir Yermakov, director of the Foreign Ministry's Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, as saying that contacts with the USA could be resumed as soon as Russia's "special" military operation in Ukraine was completed.
Yermakov said that Moscow believes that the USA has the intention of completing plans to deploy medium and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
But Yermakov provided no evidence to support this claim.
"The appearance of such weapons in these two regions will worsen the situation and strengthen the arms race," the agency quoted him as saying.
Earlier on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO) and Washington to stop supplying Ukraine with weapons if they were "really interested in solving the Ukrainian crisis."
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