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A complete rift between the US and Russia seems to be getting closer and closer. After the final cancellation of the Trump-Putin meeting, the two countries are distancing themselves from dialogue every day.
On Monday, Vladimir Putin signed off on the termination of the now-defunct plutonium disposal agreement with the United States, effectively confirming the "cold relations" between Moscow and Washington.
It is noted that this specific agreement was intended to prevent the construction of more nuclear weapons for both sides.
Thus, in combination with the recent successful test of a new nuclear-powered missile on Sunday, Western leaders accuse Russia of increasingly intensifying nuclear aggression, culminating in February 2022, when the invasion of Ukraine occurred.
Indicative was today's statement by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who responded to Trump's negative criticism of the Russian missile test. "Despite our positive approach to starting a dialogue with the US, Russia is guided by our national interests. So it was, so it is and so it will continue to be," he said.
The Russian president has ended an agreement with the United States, under which the US and Russia pledged to destroy 34 tons of plutonium no longer needed for defense purposes.
Specifically, US officials estimated that the agreement could eliminate the material needed to produce about 17,000 nuclear weapons.
The law was passed by the State Duma on October 8 and approved by the Federation Council on October 22. In addition to the agreement, all accompanying protocols are denounced.
The agreement between Russia and the United States on weapons-grade plutonium was concluded in 2000 and ratified in 2011.
It stipulated that each country would discard 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium that it did not need.
The plutonium disposal agreement was terminated by decree of the Russian president in October 2016. At the time, Putin had suspended Russia's participation in the agreement when relations with Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, had deteriorated. Implementation of the agreement was supposed to begin in 2018, Medusa reports.
Russian authorities justified this decision by citing "the emergence of a threat to strategic stability as a result of hostile actions by the United States against the Russian Federation," as well as the inability of the United States to fulfill its obligations to dispose of excess weapons-grade plutonium.
Russian demands that were not accepted
Weapons-grade plutonium was originally intended to be used as a fuel component for nuclear power plants.
However, the United States considered this disposal method unprofitable for the development of nuclear energy and decided to bury it, allowing Russia to accuse the American side of violating the agreement.
In 2016, Russia submitted a series of demands for the renewal of the plutonium disposal agreement.
These included:
the lifting of all sanctions imposed on Russia at that time,
compensation for damages caused by restrictive measures and
the reduction of US military infrastructure and troops in countries that joined NATO after September 1, 2000, to the levels that existed at the time the agreement was signed.
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