Russia will not join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, said Sergei Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs. According to him, particular countries must not be forced to take this step without the consideration of their security interests.
He said that complete elimination of nuclear weapons is possible only in the context of total disarmament, and only in the case where all countries, including the nuclear-weapon states, are in conditions of equal, indivisible security, according to proliferation treaty. Lavrov also informed of Moscow's response to Washington's violation of the IRNFT.
Sergei Lavrov, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs: "Since the USA has already started to build land-based missiles of intermediate range, we, as President Putin warned, will take similar measures. At the same time, with the aim of securing a chance to find ways to maintain missile predictability, Russia made the decision to not deploy land-based missiles of intermediate range anywhere, unless other regions deploy missiles of a similar class, produced in the USA".
