Actions of the United States and its allies aimed at preserving the US's world dominance have eroded the global security architecture, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Friday.
"In an effort to maintain its world dominance, the United States and its allies have seriously eroded the global security architecture. On their initiative, the process of demolition and dismantling of key agreements on arms control and confidence building has been launched," Shoigu told a meeting of the defense ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in New Delhi.
In addition, Shoigu noted that the current meeting with colleagues from SCO member states was taking place in "an extremely unstable" international environment.
The formation of a new multipolar world is causing drastic, dynamic and irreversible changes, which are opposed by the collective West, the Russian defense minister said.
The Russian defense chief recalled that Washington had first unilaterally terminated the Soviet-US Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, refused to ratify the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, and then had withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies.
The SCO is an international organization founded by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Russia and Uzbekistan in 2001.
In 2017, India and Pakistan were also admitted to the organization. The SCO also has Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia as observer states, while Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkiye are partner countries.
In July 2022, Belarus submitted its application to join the SCO as a full-fledged member.