MOSCOW. Jan 27 (Interfax) - Russia assumes that the United States did not stealthily deploy missile launchers in breach of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday.
"We assume that there has been no stealthy deployment of launchers by the U.S. in violation of the treaty," Ryabkov said at a State Duma plenary session dealing with the extension of New START.
"After all, the number of inspections, and this is 18 inspections a year, the number of demonstrations, the amount of information shared through notifications, and other procedures, which I'd like to stress are strictly reciprocal and do not envision any unilateral obligations on Russia's part, in our view, enable us to quite confidently complement the picture we obtain through national technical means for verifying the opponent's conduct and through other methods," he said.
"As for the exchange of telemetry, I'll remind you that the treaty envisions such an exchange of information on up to five ballistic missile launches a year. As a matter of fact, in the past few years, telemetry has been exchanged on one launch [a year] on each side. Thus, I think there has been a sufficient balance between transparency and secrecy here," Ryabkov said.