“To establish an effective anti-missile "umbrella" over Europe, radars should therefore be deployed on almost half of Russia's territory,” said the leader of Yabloko Grigory Yavlinsky on March 6, 2001 in an interview with the Argumenti i Fakti weekly. “It is necessary to cooperate on behalf of common security. One of our conditions should be placement of NATO orders at our enterprises.

“We received a letter from President George Bush detailing specific orders for our defence industry. We should not be afraid of the fact that this proposal was made by the U.S. President. Americans continue to dominate in NATO. The idea of building a European ABM system to counterbalance the American system is sheer nonsense. We will never tear Europe away from America or destroy NATO. They will always be together, while we can find ourselves on the roadside.”

Yavlinsky first said that it was necessary to create a Russia-Europe non-strategic missile-defence system as early as 1998. Today President Vladimir Putin has proposed doing the same.

Based on AIF-Novosti reports

See also:

Grigory Yavlinsky: Umbrella for Europe, Money for Russia, Death to Bin Laden
Argumenty i Fakty, No. 10, 2001