Russia will develop its own nuclear offensive arms race if NATO fails to reach an agreement over the European defence shield, Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has said, following a Russia-Nato meeting in Brussels.
“We have no other way, otherwise we’ll just have to develop an arms race. We failed to agree on conceptual approaches … Our dialogue must be continued,” he added.
The Russia-Nato meeting agreed on the plan of work for 2011 but did not reach a solution of conceptual approaches for cooperation on the missile shield.
Russia has retained staunch opposition to the planned deployment of US missile defence systems near its borders favouring a joint system with full-scale interoperability.
Nato and Russia had agreed to cooperate on the missile shield during the Nato-Russia Council summit in Lisbon last year, according to RIA Novosti.
