This is stated in a statement by Ryabkov, published on the website of the Russian department.
“The immediate “trigger” was the notification received from the American side of the intention to conduct an inspection on our territory in the coming days.
In the current circumstances, such a step looked, in fact, like an outright provocation,” he said.
As Ryabkov explained, inspection activities under the Treaty since the beginning of 2020 have been suspended by agreement of the parties due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At the same time, a fairly close professional dialogue was conducted through the appropriate channels on how the parties could return to the full implementation of the Treaty in terms of verification and what organizational and technical problems need to be solved for this.
Some of the issues were resolved, but many disagreements remained.
“The point is also that against the background of what is happening now in our relations with Western countries, additional obstacles have emerged for the resumption of inspection activities under the Treaty.
We are talking about the lack of normal air traffic due to the fault of the West, ignoring our requests to confirm the possibility of our aircraft flying with inspectors through the airspace of transit countries, visa problems during transit, difficulties in making payments for services during inspections, and so on.
All this complicates, if not blocks, our ability to carry out unhindered inspections on US soil and creates unilateral advantages for the American side.
This, of course, is unacceptable,” the diplomat stressed.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that after solving problems with START inspections, Russia would cancel their suspension.