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21 Sep, 2021 14:00

New AUKUS nuclear bloc won't just battle China, it will take West into confrontation with Russia too, Moscow's security chief says

New AUKUS nuclear bloc won't just battle China, it will take West into confrontation with Russia too, Moscow's security chief says

A new geopolitical deal that will see the US and UK team up with Australia to station nuclear submarines deep down in the Pacific Ocean is a hostile step aimed not only at Beijing, but at Moscow too, a top Russian official claims.

Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council, told the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper on Tuesday that the pact between the three nations, known as AUKUS, will inevitably be yet another military bloc aimed at containing and confronting the two strongest non-Western powers.

According to the interview, Patrushev compared the pact to QUAD, a strategic dialogue format between the US, India, Japan, and Australia, designed to strengthen Washington's position across Asia. According to him, the group is “a military-political bloc with a pronounced pro-American character.”

“Just the other day, another military bloc was formed in the region – the American-British-Australian AUKUS, which pursues the same goals,” the top official went on. According to him, the new deal, which will see London and Washington hand over the technical know-how for Canberra to develop and deploy nuclear-powered submarines, is a threat to “the entire security architecture in Asia.”

Also on rt.com France RECALLS ambassadors from US and Australia, citing ‘exceptional gravity’ of AUKUS submarine deal

France, which saw its long-delayed multibillion-dollar deal to supply Australia with a fleet of new submarines canned as a result of the new pact, has hit out at the decision. Over the weekend, Paris ordered its ambassadors in Washington and Canberra home as part of a furious response to the move, with the French envoy to Australia accusing his host country of “treason in the making.” Jean-Pierre Thebault said that all options were on the table in terms of a diplomatic response after his nation was “stabbed in the back.”

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