• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov's interview with the Izvestia newspaper, January 6, 2022

6 January 2022 19:47
8-06-01-2022

Question: In January, Russian diplomats will have a series of meetings on the dialogue on security guarantees initiated by Moscow: a meeting with the United States in Geneva on January 10, a Russia - NATO Council meeting on January 12 and a meeting with the OSCE, a regional security body, on January 13. Considering this multitude of negotiation platforms, the proposed draft treaties with NATO and the United States and reaction from the countries, what do you think the outcome will be and when can it be achieved?

Sergey Ryabkov: The outcome and when it will be achieved depend on our counterparts participating in these meetings. I would like to note that we will work on these matters with Alexander Grushko and Alexander Lukashevich. The arrangement is clear. We will hold an initial meeting next week to explain the logic behind our approach and lay down the terms without which a productive process would be out of the question. At this stage, the most important matter for us is to understand our opponents' stance. So far, we have only heard rather general and abstract commentaries from the United States, NATO and other countries, along the lines of some things are acceptable and are not but dialogue is most important and tt is also important that Russia de-escalates. There are very few rational kernels in this approach due to NATO's continuous and extremely intense military and geopolitical development of the territories near the Russian border, the deployment of weapons there, the intensification of military exercises and so on, which we have mentioned multiple times. Due to drastic changes in Russia's security situation, we had to urgently launch this process as instructed by the President. As the President himself has said repeatedly, we expect a rather quick result. However, after the events of next week, it will become clear whether rapid progress is possible and whether there is any chance of pursuing the course that we are primarily interested in.

I am not ready to talk about the scale of priorities right now. First, we need to hear what our opponents have to say in response to the drafts we have literally put on the negotiating table and what our partners have to say. I want to stress that immediately after these drafts were handed over to the Americans, we had a very productive conversation with our CSTO allies and several other countries in Moscow, and we are maintaining this dialogue. This is not a circle of contacts that is closed to our Western counterparts. Not at all. We are fully transparent with our closest allies and partners in various formats. This work will continue as it is an integral part of the corresponding efforts. We are launching this comprehensive process in the next few days.

Question: The Americans have already said that some of Russia's proposals are unacceptable to the United States and its European allies.

Sergey Ryabkov: But they did not specify which proposals.

Question: Nevertheless, is Moscow ready to walk away from some of the provisions of these treaties or to change them so that the documents can be adopted?

Sergey Ryabkov: Diplomacy involves seeking solutions based on a balance of interests. We do not intend to contest every single objection - otherwise it would be a peremptory demand on our part rather than a proposal to negotiate. I admit that our approach is fairly tough and I would prefer not to present flexibility and leeway as keys to success. Our tactics are completely different and our approach is rather strict precisely because we have taken too much time to persuade our counterparts and these efforts on our side previously only resulted in our counterparts listening but continuing to do whatever they were doing. No matter how much we tried to stop the negative trend in Euro-Atlantic security during the previous stages of the respective diplomatic and political efforts, we always stumbled upon actions that went contrary to the promises given to us and even to documents that were, it is true, politically binding, but still binding. Therefore, now we are making another very serious attempt to reach agreement after all on which lines cannot be crossed and which approaches that we laid down must not be ignored. We are being particularly tough here. I want to stress that non-advancement of NATO towards our border, non-inclusion of new members, non-deployment of weapons on respective territories, including, of course, Ukraine, no staging of provocative exercises etc. - all these conditions are absolutely necessary and without them, we will have to declare that the other party is not cooperating. We will not be able to reach agreement otherwise because it will just be a repetition of what happened with our past attempts but in circumstances that are more tense for us and, to a certain extent, more threatening.

Question: Russia and the United States have been holding consultations on strategic stability for six months now. Have working groups achieved any first results? In an earlier interview, you said that it is very important to establish a connection between offensive and strategic defensive weapons: had the United States not exited the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, there would be no Poseidon. Has a compromise been reached on this issue?

Sergey Ryabkov: For the past one and a half months, we have focused on European and Euro-Atlantic security as well as the security of our own state in view of the activity by the NATO allies and some other countries. Therefore, the issue of future arms control and any replacement of the extended New START treaty is currently considered secondary on the scale of our priorities. This does not mean that we are not dealing with this matter. On the contrary, as of late, we have sent a series of signals on further steps to the Americans. We have laid down our idea of how the working groups you mentioned can and must operate, who will coordinate them and so on. This process continues. We have not set any specific dates for continuing the dialogue on strategic stability but you are absolutely right when you say that the Americans have received expert specifications from us on what should be done further and how, including with respect to the connection between the strategic offensive and strategic defensive weapons. We do not see any compromise here yet and there is no prospect of a compromise, which is also normal and not a reason to dramatise. This is a working process, and we are maintaining a dialogue on these matters with the Americans. I think, as this work picks up pace, hopefully, there will be opportunities to agree on this matter.

Question: It appears that the strategic stability consultations, which are not easy in and of themselves, are becoming part of the larger and more complicated dialogue on security guarantees. It looks very much like what Moscow has been seeking all along, a multilateral approach to arms control. What happens if we cannot agree? And will failure shut the door on bilateral dialogue with the United States on strategic stability?

Sergey Ryabkov: I wouldn't describe it the way you just did, if for no other reason than there are indications that, on the contrary, our American colleagues would like to include the issue of security guarantees in the dialogue on strategic stability. Of course, we are not onboard with everything, considering, among other things, that the composition of the guarantee negotiators does not fully match the composition of our representatives involved in the bilateral discussion of strategic stability with the United States. That is not so important, in my opinion, as formats can be calibrated. I don't share your view of the prospects of the strategic stability dialogue as being greatly dependent on the success or failure of the dialogue on security guarantees. There are matters that are part of the fabric of both discussions. One is our proposal to formalise, after all, the mutual commitment to not deploy missiles and other mid-range and short-range ground-based weapons. We believe that this issue must be discussed in both of these frameworks although this is just an example. There are strategic stability issues that are not directly related to the agenda of the security guarantees talks. They may overlap but they are not identical concentric circles. We intend to act on the matters where it is possible to reach agreement and move forward. Success of the strategic stability dialogue does not fully depend on the progress in the talks on security guarantees, although it would be wrong to completely deny a connection between them.

Question: Would you say that it's more like two parallel tracks?

Sergey Ryabkov: They overlap but do not completely.

Question: In late December, Joe Biden said he did not rule out a meeting with Vladimir Putin as soon as in January. Are Russia and the United States really preparing for a new summit and when can it be held?

Sergey Ryabkov: There is no understanding yet on the possibility of a new in-person meeting between the presidents. In the past few weeks, they have had two very intense discussions of the entire range of issues on the agenda and now there is a series of instructions to carry out. Without knowing what will happen at our level, it is difficult to even presume when the next contact of the leaders may take place. We must work everything out in detail according to the instructions and report to our superiors. At this point, I cannot even give you an approximate timeline of what will be happening at the level of foreign ministers and other agencies and their senior officials that are involved. Before we know that, it is simply not feasible to speak about a summit.

Question: In June, the presidents of Russia and the US agreed in Geneva to enter into dialogue to normalise diplomatic relations among other things. How active is the work in this area and when do you believe the two powers will manage to normalise the operation of their diplomatic missions and the reciprocal issuance of visas?

Sergey Ryabkov: Our contacts have really intensified; specialised meetings between senior representatives were held on these matters. The discussions do not stop. They became weekly, and this is no exaggeration, sometimes they are held even several times per week, depending on the situation, via the embassies or via direct interaction between those representatives that work on certain issues, such as visa issues. Unfortunately, there is no progress on the main matters. Among the main ones, there is the United States' unacceptable, unjustified demand to limit the permitted long work-related stays of our diplomats to three years. They have to face the same requirements, and while there is no will to at least put a freeze on these requirements, mass departures within the numerical parameters I mentioned will occur in the near future. The American side raised the question of our 55 employees departing in two stages. This is unacceptable.

Secondly, we are talking about the denial of visas, the systematic denial of visas to Russian representatives, for example not issuing enough visas to those representatives who were going to participate in the NPT Review Conference. Let me stress that when it was decided to once again postpone this conference, on the very eve of the New Year, December 30, visas had only been issued to three of our employees. The head of the delegation that had to leave for New York to be at the conference for four weeks starting from January 4 did not get a visa. I would like to state at the outset that we find this practice unacceptable, as well as American representatives' attempts to pretend that they do not know what is going on, because in most cases visa requests for these representatives were sent to the Americans many weeks before the event, with a large margin for error. Now, when there will be new dates of the conference - they have not been confirmed yet, but the event will probably take place in August - we will insist that our representatives who were included in the delegation for the event that did not take place in January do not have to once again pass American administrative checks that supposedly take many weeks. They passed all these checks before January. I would like to say at the outset that new games will be unambiguously regarded as the United States' failure to comply with its obligations as home country for the UN headquarters, where events organised by the UN secretariat are held.

Despite this difficult situation around the work of diplomatic missions and the issue of visas, as well as the absolutely unacceptable situation when our diplomatic property is not returned to us and our representative are not allowed to inspect it, despite all of this, we have made some progress on some fragments of the bilateral dossier recently. It is so insignificant in the larger context, and the general tenor of our relations is, of course, negative.

Question: Is it impossible to predict when we will be able to normalise the work of diplomatic missions?

Sergey Ryabkov: We will make every effort to avoid a series of reciprocal expulsions as a first step.

Question: It is clear that now that, considering the tensions, the main dialogue between Russia and US is taking shape around the issues of strategic stability and security guarantees. Still, talks are underway in the humanitarian sphere: to return Russians and Americans serving terms in American and Russian prisons. Anyway, the fact that the both sides intend to work on this was voiced in Geneva.

Sergey Ryabkov: We worked closely in this area. I use the past tense not because we will not be doing so in the future, but because we conveyed our ideas to the Americans after a series of appropriate contacts. These ideas are clear and have been discussed many times, but now they are somewhat concretised. We are waiting for their response.

Question: Have we made any specific proposals?

Sergey Ryabkov: Everyone can see clearly what the difficulty is: our citizens who received long sentences on groundless and far-fetched charges found themselves in a situation where the US is not ready to make any concessions or to proceed, including in accordance with the scheme involving the Council of Europe Convention; while some situations concerning American citizens are presented by the American side as issues that can be solved at once. This is completely wrong, because the convictions in these high-profile cases were very serious. Right now I cannot go into details once again, because this issue has a certain history, and no talks are underway here in the direct sense of this word, but an exchange of some signals. The American side is doing this in bursts, in sinewave: either there is activity or none. In this case, they have to respond to some feelers we have sent them.