Russian Advisor on NATO Warns U.S. ABM Is Designed To "Destroy Russia"
Vladimir Kozin, a member of an interagency working group attached to the Russian presidential administration and a researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, wrote a hard-hitting article for the Moscow Times warning that the U.S. anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems are out to "destroy Russia," and advising that instead of trying to surround Russia, the United States should be working with Russia to defend the Earth from meteorites and similar dangers.
Kozin's piece is an unusually detailed analysis that rips into President Obama's phony offers of reducing offensive systems, and shows that Obama is covering up the buildup of tactical nuclear weapons at the same time as the ABM systems are built up.
"U.S. operational missile defense systems to be deployed in Romania and Poland in 2015 and 2018, respectively, are not designed to intercept potential ballistic missiles launched by Iran—the reason that the U.S. gave for introducing the missile shield," Kozin writes. "This is the task of the missile defense systems of the United States and its allies deployed in the Gulf region. The only purpose of the U.S. missile defense equipment deployed in Europe is to destroy Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles [emphasis added].
"The fact that our country is never mentioned in the missile shield program as a potential participant, proves that it is aimed at Russia. Russia is missing from both the NATO Missile Defense Action Plan and the U.S. and alliance's 'rules of engagement' concerning the use of anti-ballistic missiles, endorsed shortly after the NATO Chicago summit last year."
Kozin also throws in some very pointed questions, such as: "Why has the U.S. Air Force completed building new underground warehouses at 13 air bases in six NATO member countries to store precision nuclear air bombs designed to destroy hard targets?"
In conclusion, Kozen puts the defense of Earth question onto the table. "Quite frankly, instead of thinking how to encircle Russia with nuclear and missile defense weapons," he writes, "the American side should think about how it can work together with us and other interested parties to prevent meteorites from raining down on our planet."
Kozin's article, saying that there is no warming of relations between the U.S. and Russia under way, is similar to statements made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after he met Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this week.
Not only did Lavrov blast rosy news reports about a coming new declaration, stating that "there are no grounds for such reports whatsoever," but he pointedly alluded to Obama's failure to further U.S.-Russia cooperation discussed six years ago at Kennebunkport, Maine.
"If we cannot agree on a joint system, as Russia has proposed more than once starting 2007, when President Putin visited the U.S. [meeting with then-President Bush at Kennebunkport]," Lavrov said, "we surely should talk not about new declarations, but about guarantees that this system will not be directed against the Russian nuclear potential, which can be verified based on impartial military-technical criteria."
