MOSCOW, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Russia considers U.S. complaints about Russia's alleged violation of the Treaty on Open Skies to be groundless, a Russian official said on Tuesday.
"As for the claims against us, we consider them unreasonable. In fact, the agreement is very complex, and its provisions cannot always be straightforwardly interpreted, so it is necessary to look for compromises and solutions," Sputnik news agency quoted Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, as saying.
According to Ulyanov, on Tuesday, there was a plenary meeting of the Commission on Open Skies in Vienna, where a number of restrictions on Russian observation flights over the United States were formally introduced and announced by U.S. officials, which will come into force on Jan. 1, 2018.
Moscow does not rule out retaliatory measures in case Washington puts restrictions on the Russian observation flights over the United States, Ulyanov added.
The United States has said Kremlin imposed restrictions on flights over Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic Sea exclave, and thus violated the Treaty on Open Skies.
The treaty is one of the major confidence-building measures and arms-control in Europe after the Cold War. It has established a system of observation flights over the states which are party to the accord in order to gather information about their military forces and activities.
It took effect in 2002 and currently has 34 state parties, including Russia, the United States, and some other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
