Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov delivered a briefing to foreign military attachés in Moscow yesterday, a summary review of the past year’s military-related developments. The first part of the briefing, as reported by the English-language Telegram channel of the Russian Defense Ministry, comprised a strategic overview of Eurasian developments. “The military political situation in the world is characterized by increase of armed conflicts in the various regions,” he said at the outset. “This fact further undermined the regional and international security. The main reason of escalation is the desire of the Collective West led by the U.S.A. to preserve their global dominance, continue to implement the so-called ‘rules-based international order,’ which has no legal bases from the international law standpoint, by forceful method.”
Furthermore: “The situation is also aggravated by the crisis in the system of international arms control commitments and agreements,” Gerasimov continued. “Since 2002, the United States has undermined all the agreements in this area signed during the Cold War—the ABM Treaty, the INF Treaty, and the Open Skies Treaty. The reason why the U.S.A. withdrew from these agreements was to ensure that new weapons, which were considered the most destructive, could be developed. First of all, these are medium- and shorter-range missiles and U.S. missile defence systems for deployment in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, which provokes a strategic offensive arms race.”
