From RIA Novosti:  Russia has invited US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey to Moscow for talks which will include the missile defense issue, his Russian counterpart General Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday.

“Missile defense will be one of the points of our discussion,” Gen. Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told a meeting with foreign military attachés. . . .

“We are not challenging NATO’s right to provide a missile defense shield for itself, but cannot agree that this should be done at the expense of Russia’s deterrent capability,” he said.

Russia is planning to hold an international security conference in Moscow in May to which defense ministers from EU countries, the US, Canada and other states, as well as the heads of international organizations, such as NATO, the EU, the CSTO, and the OSCE, have been invited, Gerasimov said. . . .

Russia has threatened a range of countermeasures against NATO’s missile defenses, including tactical nuclear missile deployment in its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad and improvements to its strategic nuclear missile arsenal.  (photo: wespeaknews.com)

Image: ria%203%206%2013%20Valery-Gerasimov.jpg