Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed Wednesday
the Kremlin's new security strategy document which says the country
still feels threatened, but also aims, together with the US, to
reduce nuclear arsenals.
The paper comes with a delay of some months and to the background
of a recent rapprochement in Moscow's relations with the new
administration in Washington.
The paper says Russia continues to feel threatened by 'some
leading foreign states' - without naming any by name - while also
stressing the goal of reducing nuclear weapons alongside the US.
Among the threats to global security, the Russian policy paper
cites the rivalry of countries over untapped energy resources,
including in such places as the Caspian Sea and the Arctic region.
While avoiding the terminology typical of the Cold War days, the
Moscow paper continues to see the US as a power opponent.
The Kremlin paper comes as the US and Russia prepare to hold
disarmament negotiations at experts level starting May 18 in Moscow.
Nikolai Patruschev, chief of the national security council, told
the Moscow daily Izvestia that he hoped for a 'complete and equal
strategic partnership with the US on the basis of common interests.'
Patrushev said that the Kremlin's supreme policy aim remains
making Russia into one of the world's five leading countries by the
year 2015. Decisive elements of this is global influence,
technological development and the population's standard of living.
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