Russia’s Foreign Minister has given a long television interview during which he expanded on his criticisms of the West expressed at the UN General Assembly.

Sergei Lavrov announced a modernisation programme for Russia’s nuclear and conventional arsenals, but rejected any idea of a new arms race being underway, and ruled Russia out of participating in one.

“We are absolutely interested in our relations normalising, but it wasn’t us who destroyed them. Now there probably needs to be something like what the Americans call a ‘reset’. There was a serious rollback in relations with the US in the last years of the younger Bush, and it was the Obama administration that came up with the ‘reset’ term,” he said.

Lavrov laid the blame for tensions over Syria and Ukraine firmly at the door of America and the EU, yet insisted Russia wanted better relations that would enable a more collective approach to solving global problems like the illegal drugs trade, food security, WMD proliferation and epidemics.