Russian President Vladimir Putin’s protest of the international Nuclear Security Summit in Washington over various disagreements with the U.S. “only isolates” Moscow further, an Obama administration official said Thursday.
“Russia’s lack of participation obviously, in our view, is frankly counterproductive given that this is an area where we share an interest,” said Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. Nevertheless, the two countries’ commitments to de-nuclearize “has been a very effective and fruitful process,” Rhodes said, pointing to agreements such as the New START Treaty, under which Washington and Moscow continue to winnow their nuclear stockpiles.
Rhodes said Putin’s petulance is a “political statement” about other disagreements, such as Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
Moscow is missing “an opportunity to coordinate with the rest of the international community on these important issues,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday. “I do think that it serves to further illustrate the degree to which Russia is isolated from the rest of the international community.”
Despite extolling the de-escalation between Washington and Moscow, which control 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, Rhodes noted that Russia has not engaged in new arms-control talks since Putin took power.
President Obama noted that Russia has violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and used a Thursday op-ed in the Washington Post to call on Moscow to “comply fully with its obligations.
