MOSCOW. Aug 14 (Interfax) - Moscow negatively assesses the United States' 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Donald Trump and sees the volume of Washington's defense spending as cause for concern, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax on Tuesday.
"The general assessment is certainly negative. The top-line defense spending bill signed by the U.S. president includes, in addition to a very high volume of allocations (effectively, a record amount of $719 billion), which causes concern on its own, a series of provisions that effectively mean an attempt to impose solutions to well-known problems in the sphere of arms control, which, in our opinion, ought to be settled through dialogue and by finding these solutions at the negotiating table," Ryabkov said.
"We constantly call on the American side to do so, but, unfortunately, instead of [receiving] a constructive response, we encounter further fresh manifestations of the policy aimed at disrupting the architecture of international security and the existing system of arms control agreements," the deputy foreign minister said.