US pivot needed to pave way for strategic stability dialogue — senior Russian diplomat

MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/. For dialogue on strategic stability to progress between Russia and the United States, Washington needs to make some big changes in its policy towards Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.

"We are not seeking to evade acknowledging the importance of this issue [of strategic stability] and recognize the topicality of strategic stability, especially in the present-day turbulent world, but we state that certain conditions will be needed for what we hope will be a productive discussion of issues related to this in the future. These conditions include, first and foremost, visible improvements in the US policy toward Russia. So far, we see none," he replied to a TASS question on the sidelines of the Primakov Readings international expert forum.

Nevertheless, according to Ryabkov, Russia sees certain signals from the US side about its readiness to discuss certain aspects of strategic stability. "It doesn't necessarily have to be in a multilateral format. As far as I understand, the US side is probably open to such ideas in a bilateral format with us as well," he added.