MOSCOW. Sept 7 (Interfax) - The arms control dialogue between Russia and the United States is currently of an irregular nature, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
"Today the dialogue with the Americans, including the dialogue on arms control, is extremely sporadic and non-systematic. The fault and responsibility for that rests entirely with Washington," Ryabkov said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper published on Thursday.
When commenting on U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's statement about the need to draw a line between disagreements on Ukraine and dialogue on strategic stability, Ryabkov said that no new proposals, including written ones, have been received from the U.S.
"We discussed it several times verbally at different levels. We did not receive any meaningful clarification or any significant points in addition to what the national security advisor said in his known speech, and, as a matter of fact, we did not expect them," he said.
"Everything is at roughly the same level so far, and I do not think that anything will change here in the near future. We have patiently been conveying our logic and our approaches to them," he said.
Recently, Russia has officially become the coordinator of the P5, an informal group of the five nuclear-weapon states, Ryabkov said.
"On the whole, the specifics of the current international situation certainly cannot help but affect this work as well," Ryabkov said after being asked whether disagreements over Ukraine could impact Russia's role there.
"We are not expecting an easy time and an easy path. We are also ready for disputes, encounters, clashes within the P5 ring with our opponents from the West," he said.
"Here I anticipate not even difficulties [...] but situations where we will be explaining why they are wrong and will be hearing illogical arguments devoid of any sound foundation in response," Ryabkov said.