New US strategy 'aligns with Russia's vision'

The Kremlin on Sunday welcomed US President Donald Trump's new national security strategy and said it largely accorded with Russia's own perceptions, the first time that Moscow has so fulsomely praised such a document from its former Cold War foe.

- WAM

The US National Security Strategy described Trump's vision as one of "flexible realism" and argued that the US should revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere to be Washington's zone of influence.

The strategy, signed by Trump, also warned that Europe faces "civilisational erasure," that it was a "core" US interest to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, and that Washington wanted to reestablish strategic stability with Russia.

"The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin when asked about the new US strategy.

Such fulsome public agreement between Moscow and Washington on the tectonic plates of global politics is rare, though they did cooperate closely after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union on returning nuclear weapons from former Soviet republics to Russia, and after the deadly Sept.ll, 2001, attacks on the United States.