The Kremlin signalled on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile shield plans could prompt the resumption of nuclear arms control talks between Moscow and Washington in the near future.
Asked about Trump’s announcement that he had selected a design for the $175-billion Golden Dome missile defence shield, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a sovereign matter for the United States.
‘Golden Dome’ Missile Shield
The so-called “Golden Dome”, inspired by Israel’s land-based Iron Dome defence shield, is an ambitious project aimed at blocking threats from China and Russia, which the United States views as its two biggest geopolitical competitors.
Peskov, asked if Russia saw the project as a threat to Russia’s nuclear parity with the United States, said that there was no detail about the U.S. project, and many nuances remained.
“In the foreseeable future, the very course of events requires the resumption of contacts on issues of strategic stability,” Peskov said.
Russia and the United States, by far the biggest nuclear powers, have both expressed regret about the disintegration of the tangle of arms control treaties which sought to slow the arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear war.
INF Treaty
The United States blames Russia for the collapse of agreements such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
The United States formally withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, citing Russian violations, which Moscow denied. The United States withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002.
“Now that the legal framework in this area has been destroyed, and the validity period has expired, or deliberately, let’s say, a number of documents have ceased to be valid, this base must be recreated both in the interests of our two countries and in the interests of security throughout the planet,” Peskov said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
