Moscow says the U.S. is refusing to let Russian officials travel to the UN to state their case against missile defense

The Kremlin has objected to the United States’ refusal to grant visas to a Russian Defense Ministry delegation seeking to participate in an upcoming UN briefing where officials will discuss issues surrounding the deployment of U.S. missile-defense systems.

Defense Ministry spokesman Alexander Emelyanov says the U.S. will have deployed a thousand components in its missile-defense program by the year 2022, exceeding the number of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles, thereby undermining Moscow’s deterrence potential.

In September 2017, in a speech to the UN Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accused Russia of “violating its own obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, flouting the security assurances it made at the end of the Cold War, impeding efforts to build on the legacy of past international efforts on nuclear security, and seeking to weaken the International Atomic Energy Agency’s independence in investigating clandestine nuclear programs.”