Russian Deputy Foreign Minister (FM) Sergei Ryabkov has warned that if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United States of America (USA) do not respond to Russia's demand for security guarantees, it could lead to a new round of confrontation.
"The absence of progress towards a political-diplomatic solution to this problem will lead to our response being at the military and technical level," Ryabkov said in a statement to RIA Novosti news agency.
The Russian diplomat had previously stated that one of Moscow's main concerns is that weapons systems previously banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty may reappear, at the behest of NATO members, soon in Europe.
Ryabkov commented on the matter, saying: "Whether this will be a confrontation, this will be the next round; it will be in the emergence of such media from our side. Now they do not exist, we have a unilateral moratorium, we call for NATO and the United States to join this moratorium.
The answer, at best, is (first get rid of the regimes that led to the INF Treaty’s collapse), as if it weren’t for other geopolitical considerations that prompted the United States to withdraw from the treaty (and later we’ll look at something else).
Subsequently, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a new initiative to resolve the situation with the heightened tensions in Europe after the withdrawal of the USA from the INF Treaty.
He noted in particular that Moscow was ready, of its own volition, to refrain from deploying the "M729 9" missiles on the European part of the Russian Federation, provided that there are corresponding steps from NATO.
At the NATO summit last June, the participants stated that they did not consider the Russian proposal to stop the deployment of medium and short-range missiles in Europe after the relevant treaty was terminated.
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