New U.S. administration not going to review plans to upgrade nuclear triad – Ryabkov

Sergei Ryabkov file photo

MOSCOW. Feb 6 (Interfax) – Moscow is not expecting the new United States administration to review its plans to modernize the nuclear triad, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

“The U.S. is standing at the threshold of the beginning of significant efforts of modernizing its nuclear triad. These plans were announced closer towards the end of Obama’s second term. I don’t think there is any reason to expect these plans will undergo serious change under the Trump administration,” Ryabkov said in an interview with PIR-Center’s Security Index magazine.

“Rather to the contrary: even somewhat controversial elements of the plan announced under [Barack] Obama will be funded more efficiently, if one may say so,” the deputy minister said.

Ryabkov also fully ruled out a possibility that the new U.S. administration would cut funding for military programs despite its focus on making such funding more efficient.

“Speculating on these topics is both complicated and irresponsible on my part, but this is clearly not the area where America is going to concentrate on domestic issues,” Ryabkov said.

“I think that the idea that U.S. security can only be guaranteed on global scale is shared by everyone in America, and the new president will probably stick to the same approach,” the deputy minister said.

[featured image is file photo from different occasion]

Comment