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On Wednesday, Kommersant reported that Moscow would end its participation in a decades-old program with the USA aimed at dismantling WMDs. The paper reported sources in the US State Department as saying that Russia’s no longer interested in the Nunn-Lugar programme…also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme (CTR)… that dates back to the early 1990’s, which helped decommission scores of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons after the Soviet collapse.
US officials told the paper that their Russian counterparts informed them during a recent meeting that Moscow no longer needed financial assistance, emphasising instead the importance of guarding state secrets. The move is the latest in Moscow’s review of its relationship with Washington, and comes after the Kremlin kicked the USAID out of Russia earlier this month. It also follows comments last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the “reset” policy between Russia and the United States “can’t last forever”.
The CTR program began in 1991, and has had two extensions, in 1999 and 2006. The current terms expires in 2013. According to the CTR website, the USA spent an estimated 8 billion USD on CTR, which included measures to increase safety at nuclear plants in the former USSR and generating alternative work for former institutes and production facilities that had produced WMDs.
10 October 2012
RIA-Novosti
6 January 2018. Statista Infographic. Global Nuclear Arsenal on 17 February 2017
Tags: atomic weapons, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Donald Trump, DPRK, military, North Korea, North Korean nuclear program, nuclear deterrent, Nuclear weapon, political commentary, politics, strategic weapons, United States, USA, Weapon of mass destruction, weapons, weapons of mass destruction, WMDs
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Both the Trumpkin Munchkins and the Clintonista Stepford Wives are raising a holy stink about the DPRK’s nuclear capability. Earth to neoliberal scumtickets:
That is, Trump’s histrionics are nothing more but him taking out his gazoo and claiming, “My dick is bigger than your dick is!” The Clintonista clucking on the issue amounts to the same juvenile thing. By the way… do note that the USA isn’t numero uno on this chart… Russia is. Hmm… Russia DOES have the DPRK’s back. The truth is an interesting thing, isn’t it?
BMD