MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at last month’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Munich failed to present a single shred of evidence that Russia was in breach of the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, responding to Stoltenberg’s claims that NATO was certain about Moscow’s violations of the agreement.
"He lies without even blushing. At a recent meeting in Munich with Lavrov, Stoltenberg failed to present a single piece of evidence of the alleged INF Treaty violations. All of NATO’s arguments are, as usual, of the "everything-is-on-social-networks" and "no-one-else-but-you-is-capable-of-this" type.
The United States argues that Russia has violated the INF accord and demands that Moscow should eliminate its ground-based 9M729 cruise missile. On February 2, the United States suspended compliance with its obligations under the treaty and warned it would quit the agreement altogether in six months’ time. In response to this move, on February 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared Moscow was suspending its participation in the agreement, too.
NATO issued its own statement simultaneously with the US decision to repeat its own claims from 18 months ago to the effect that Russia, according to its classified sources, was allegedly in breach of the INF treaty and bore responsibility for Washington’s unilateral pullout. The INF dispute was on the agenda of the Lavrov-Stoltenberg meeting at the Munich Security Conference on February 15.
