Russia has found itself in a state of de facto open conflict with the United States, in these conditions it is not possible to conduct business with Washington as before, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday.
“We can’t do business as before. And this applies to everything before the period when we found ourselves in a state of de facto open conflict with the United States,” Ryabkov said at a session of the Valdai Club.
At the same time, as the deputy minister noted, the basis for Russia’s decision to suspend the START Treaty was a “fundamental change in circumstances.”
“It’s multi-component. Generically, in a generalized form, this is a complete change in the course of the United States in the Russian direction for all the time since 2010, when the treaty was ratified, and the emergence of a situation in which the United States is actually a party to the conflict in Ukraine,” Ryabkov said.
According to him, “legal doctrine has long allowed, and these interpretations are laid down, among other things, in the Convention on the Law of Treaties, that in the event of a fundamental change in circumstances, a party to a treaty has the right to withdraw from it or perform other actions.”
“The suspension is one of the forms of demonstration that it is unacceptable for us to be in the same framework and, of course, to conduct business as before,” Ryabkov said.