MOSCOW. Jan 24 (Interfax) - Russia takes the activity of the U.S. Navy and its allies in the Black Sea and the Pacific and Arctic Oceans into account in its military planning and response, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
"We can see that the U.S. Navy and allies of the United States have been frequenting the Black Sea. We are observing similar activity in the Pacific. You have mentioned the Arctic. Still, operations, including ones of U.S. submarines, have been conducted in the Arctic since the dawn of time. I can assure you that our military is not only closely monitoring those actions, but is also taking them into account in its planning and response," Ryabkov told the journal International Affairs.
"Now that Russia and China have been officially designated adversaries in U.S. military and political documents, concrete measures are being taken to test response capacity, including the combined-arms response of the Russian Armed Forces and, perhaps, of China as well, to various sorts of actions, including ones taken in the immediate vicinity of our borders," he said.
"In order to have a certain guarantee of the avoidance of dangerous crises, we believe it is important to update the bilateral agreement of 1972 on the prevention of incidents at the sea and in the airspace above the sea," Ryabkov said.
"We made such proposals in the past and even had some initial contacts," he said.
"There was a general decline in bilateral relations afterward, and the work was frozen because of the United States. In fact, they are reluctant to engage in many normal, useful, and important cooperation areas. This is a worrisome situation. We have been trying to tell them that this is not some concession to Russia or an unfounded demonstration of flexibility or softness in relations with Russia. This is something that is in their interests," Ryabkov said.