Arms control is thing of the past, Russia's top general says

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia now views arms control over the vast nuclear arsenals that were built up during the Cold War to be a thing of the past due to the lack of trust between Moscow and the West, Russia's top general said on Wednesday.

Russia and the United States, by far the biggest nuclear powers, have both expressed regret about the disintegration of the tangle of arms control treaties which sought to slow the arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear war.

Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov accused the United States of stoking conflicts across the world and sinking key Cold War arms control treaties. He said Russia, in response, would develop ties with China, India, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.

"On the whole, the topic of arms control remains in the past, since a return to a minimum level of trust is impossible today due to the double standards of the West," Gerasimov was quoted as saying by the defence ministry.

"Without trust, it is impossible to create an effective mechanism for mutual control," he said. "Many countries have begun to think about adequate response measures."

The United States, which casts Russia and China as the biggest nation-state threats to the West, blames Russia for the collapse of agreements such as the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The United States formally withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, citing Russian violations which Moscow denied. The United State withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002.

President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in the New START treaty that limits both sides' strategic nuclear weapons, blaming U.S. support for Ukraine. However, Moscow has kept to the warhead, missile and bomber limits imposed by the agreement - as has the United States.

Gerasimov said that the deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe and Asia was stoking "a strategic offensive arms race", with a build-up of U.S. forces in the Philippines of particular concern to Russia.

He said Russia had seen increased activity by the U.S.-led NATO military alliance near Russia's borders. After Ukraine struck Russian territory last month with long-range missiles supplied by the United States, the U.S. had become a direct participant in the conflict in Ukraine, the general added.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Mark Trevelyan)