MOSCOW. Oct 23 (Interfax) - Russia and the U.S. should launch a cybersecurity dialogue without prior conditions; Moscow is hoping that after the U.S. presidential election, Washington will positively react to its proposals, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
"I believe, to start this dialogue, there shouldn't be any prior conditions. One should immediately sit down and negotiate. What's bad about it? We're not proposing anything what wouldn't meet the interests of our partners," Putin said during a plenary session of the Valdai international discussion club on Thursday.
"If somebody thinks that someone else interferes in their affairs, let's establish general rules and elaborate instruments for monitoring how we observe our agreements," he said.
Putin said he does not understand Washington's persistent reluctance to maintain a dialogue on the subject of cybersecurity with Moscow.
"In the last months of Obama's presidency, the administration signaled to us that they had spent a long time considering it and finally got ready for a dialogue. But unfortunately, soon that was over, there came a new president, and we would have begun like from the center of the field with the new administration, but then again, we've come up to nothing in these nearly four years," he said.
"I very much hope that when the election is over, our partners will come back to this subject and react to our proposals in a positive way," he said.
"It wasn't by chance that in my introductory speech, I mentioned the dialogue between the Soviet Union and the United States in the sphere of limiting strategic offensive weapons. We agreed between us that we'd keep these weapons at a certain level. And we propose negotiating in a similar way in the sphere, which is emerging right in front of us and which is extremely important to the entire world and to our countries," Putin said.