You're reading: Rogozin: Russia insists on U.S. missile defense guarantees

MOSCOW - Russia expects that, following Barack Obama's reelection as the U.S. president, Washington will take into account Russia's concerns about missile defense, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said at the international conference Nuclear Weapons and International Security in the 21st Century on Thursday.

As regards a missile defense system and the assurances that it is not
targeted against Russia, we do not trust words. Gorbachev trusted, but
we don’t,” Rogozin said.

“We are bad guys,” he joked.

“We need guarantees, better put on paper, that the missile defense
system being built in Europe is aimed against short- and medium-range
missiles,” he said.

“For the time being, the declared parameters of this system are such that it can intercept Russian heavy missiles,” he said.

“The missile defense system may be not against us but it is about us,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said on Wednesday that
Washington could not give written guarantees that the missile defense
system is not targeted against Russia because it believes the threats
emanating from Iran are unpredictable.

“We don’t know how the threat in Iran will develop. That has nothing
to do with Russia. We can’t constrain our military forces against a
threat because the threat is a variable, it is not a constant,” McFaul
said in an interview with Interfax on Wednesday.