“We are just consistently implementing our plans for expanding cooperation,” which Putin asserted were based on the goals laid out in their 2001 bilateral friendship treaty.Nonetheless, the Russian president added that the two governments’ “positions coincide on a number of matters on the current global agenda,” including economics and trade.In this regard, Putin noted that Chinese and Russian leaders believe that, since the share of the global GDP accounted for by the Group of Seven (G7) Western industrial countries has declined over the last 25 years from 58 percent to 40 percent, the governance of the world’s economic institutions should be adjusted accordingly.Although he chastised Americans’ alleged unwillingness to share leadership with rising powers, and supposedly exaggerated fears of Russian and Chinese military power, Putin argued that the deterrence effect of nuclear weapons decreased his fear of a military conflict between Beijing and Washington since each understood the devastation such a war would cause.On the sidelines of the April 2019 Moscow Security Conference, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu Wei reciprocated, calling their mutual defense ties “the closest interaction which is the best among all relations between large countries.”Discussing the recent developments regarding North Korea, which included a summit between the Russian and DPRK leaders in the Russian city of Vladivostok, Putin argued that the key to incentivizing the North to renounce nuclear weapons was to determine how “to ensure the unconditional security of North Korea and how to make any country, including North Korea feel safe and protected by international law that is strictly honoured by all members of the international community.”In Putin’s view, this required avoiding future military required avoiding future military interventions aimed at regime change, such as the NATO campaign in Libya, and instead following something like the détente policy between the USSR and the West that helped end the Cold War.Furthermore, one of Putin’s comments seems a justification, and perhaps confirmation, of the assassination attempt against Russian intelligence officer and double agent Sergei Skripal: “treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished.“I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Donald Trump wrote Vladimir Putin a personal letter in 2007, ... “Thank you to Time Magazine and Financial Times for naming me ‘Person of the Year’ – a great honor!” he tweeted.
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And thank you for our interesting conversation today. Originally designated SEA…Over the past thirty years, the United States and its core allies have gone through three phases of innovation with regard to conventional forces. But traitors must be punished.”Regarding arms control, Putin had expressed exacerbation that the Trump administration had not accepted his offer to extend New START by five years, as provided for by the treaty: “we have not seen any relevant initiative from our American partners….Our previous conversation with Donald showed that the Americans seem to be interested in this, but still they are not making any practical steps.”Putin and other Russian leaders had been repeating this criticism of U.S. non-responsiveness regarding New START for months, but the Russian government is partly responsible for the delay.For years Russian officials have been expressing “concerns” about the procedure the United States was following in reducing the number of warheads on U.S. nuclear delivery vehicles, averring that their removal could be rapidly reversed in a crisis, without formally charging the U.S. with violating the treaty, thereby increasing skepticism among U.S. officials whether Moscow sincerely seeks to maintain New START.Last month, Timothy Morrison, White House National Security Council director for weapons of mass destruction, told a Hudson Institute audience that, “there’s a significant question with respect to whether or not the Russians are interested in extending New START.“They have these contrivances that they have hurled against us and the prior administration on how we’ve converted our ballistic missile submarines and our heavy bombers.”In Putin’s view, this decision, as well as the failure to develop new joint restraints or projects on Russian-U.S. missile defenses, unleashed a dangerous era of “new weapons and cutting-edge military technology” that threatens to destabilize world politics.However, while concerns about U.S. missile defenses partly explain why Moscow has been developing and deploying new strategic delivery systems, the flow of causation for the United States was stronger in the opposite direction — the advent of new defense technologies and new types of post-Cold War threats has led the United States to pursue a more diverse range of missile defenses aimed at non-Russian targets.The Commonwealth has released more information to industry for the Royal Australian Navy’s SEA 129 Phase 5 Block 1, Block 2, and Block 3 Maritime UAS requirements. June 27 2019 This is the transcript of a conversation between Vladimir Putin, Russian president, Lionel Barber, Financial Times editor, and Henry …