Russia accuses US military of deploying ‘threat to our country’ ahead of Pompeo talks – Washington Examiner

U.S. military assets are threatening Russia, Moscow’s top diplomat alleged just days before a high-profile visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed to President Trump’s sale of missile-defense systems to Japan as evidence.

“We view these steps as a threat to our country,” he said, per state-run media.

Japanese officials have moved to fortify their missile defenses in response to North Korea’s development of ballistic missiles, but Russia has maintained that the U.S. and regional allies are using the threat as an excuse for a military buildup on their eastern border.

Lavrov renewed the complaint on Friday, just as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is trying to set the table for “positive conversations” when he meets with President Vladimir Putin next week.

“We have once more focused our attention on some steps of Washington’s,” Lavrov said Friday after a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono. “Among them are the deployment of global missile defense units in Japan, its increasing military presence in the region, and other actions in the disarmament and arms control fields, where the United States is smashing all the current agreements.”

Pompeo is taking a more conciliatory tone in lead-up to his meetings with Putin and Lavrov in Sochi next week, when he makes his first trip to Russia as the top U.S. diplomat. His team went so far as to withdraw a statement applauding the conviction of two Russian military intelligence officers who were charged with attempted terrorism in the wake of a failed coup attempt against Montenegro — a case that highlighted “Russia’s brazen attempt to undermine the sovereignty of an independent European nation,” as the State Department put it Thursday.

That statement was released by mistake and subsequently withdrawn from the department’s website. “Pompeo opposed it,” Foreign Policy reported, citing sources “who suggested it was because the secretary wanted to soften combative tones with Moscow ahead of his forthcoming visit to Russia.”

The United States and Russia are at loggerheads on a number of issues, including some initiatives that Pompeo has orchestrated. The former Kansas Republican lawmaker oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Russia supports. He was the face of the decision to scrap a landmark Cold War-era nuclear arms control deal in response to Russian violations of the pact.

“No administration has been tougher than the Trump administration in imposing costs on Russia for its malign activities,” a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters in a preview of Pompeo’s agenda for his Tuesday meetings. “This is the work of diplomacy: showing up, having frank discussions, and working to find areas where we can cooperate.”

And Pompeo has been Trump’s top lieutenant in the negotiations to denuclearize North Korea, dating back to Easter of 2018, when he traveled to Pyongyang to begin negotiations with the regime even though he was still CIA director at the time.

The senior State Department official pointed to that effort as a subject where the administration has had relatively “constructive discussions” with Russia amid a host of thornier controversies. But Putin has worked to protect the regime from international sanctions throughout the crisis — by blocking the most aggressive proposals at the United Nations Security Council and overlooking North Korean smuggling operations that defy the sanctions, according to U.S. officials.

“Even though we don’t agree with Russia about all the details of how to achieve this goal, we will continue dialogue to bridge gaps on the way forward,” the senior State Department official told reporters.

Lavrov’s criticism of regional missile defenses shows how difficult that can be. Russian officials pushed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reject such armaments in December of 2016, just a few months after the regime test-fired a missile that landed within waters reserved for Japan’s exclusive economic use. The Russian Foreign Ministry maintained that such defense systems are “not commensurate with the threats emanating” from North Korea and argued that the United States was using the regime “as a pretext for deploying more advanced weapons in this region.”

North Korea subsequently tested a ballistic missile that flew over Japanese territory. But when the United States approved a $2 billion sale of Aegis Ashore missile defenses in January, Lavrov accused the two allies of conspiring to position cruise missiles on Russia’s eastern flank — an accusation that Japanese officials dismissed.

“Look, our mission set is to try and find paths forward,” Pompeo said to explain his outreach to Russia earlier this week. “I met with Foreign Minister Lavrov before. I met with my counterparts when I was at CIA to find places where we have overlapping interests where we can make progress together. That’s what I hope we can achieve. It may be that we can’t do that. We’ll see.”