MOSCOW (AP) – The Kremlin on Friday rejected US President Joe Biden’s proposal to extend the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the two countries, which expires in less than two weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was in favor of renewing the treaty and was waiting to see the details of the US proposal.
The White House said on Thursday that Biden had proposed to Russia a five-year extension of the New START treaty.
“We can only welcome political will to expand the document,” Peskov said in a conference with reporters. “But it all depends on the details of the proposal.”
The treaty, signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and aims to verify comprehensive on-site inspections to comply. It expires on February 5th.
Russia has long proposed to extend the treaty without any conditions or changes, but President Donald Trump’s government waited until last year to begin talks and made enlargement dependent on a set of demands. The talks stalled, and months of negotiations could not limit the differences.
“Certain conditions for the extension were put forward, and some of them were absolutely unacceptable to us, so let’s first look at what the US has to offer,” Peskov said.
Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, also saw Biden’s proposal as an ‘encouraging step’.
“The expansion will give the two parties more time to consider possible additional measures to strengthen strategic stability and global security,” he tweeted.
During the campaign, Biden indicated that he was in favor of maintaining the New START Treaty, which was negotiated during his tenure as U.S. Vice President.
Talks on extending the treaty have also been clouded by tensions between Russia and the United States, fueled by the Ukraine crisis, Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election and other irritants.
Despite the proposal for enlargement, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was still committed to holding Russia “accountable for its reckless and contradictory actions”, such as its alleged involvement in the Solar Winds burglary incident. the 2020 election, the chemical poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny and the widely reported allegations that Russia may have offered talies to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Asked to comment on Psaki’s statement, Peskov confirmed Russia’s involvement in such activities.
Following the withdrawal of both Moscow and Washington from the 1987 Nuclear Treaty between 1987 and 1987, New START is the only remaining nuclear weapons control agreement between the two countries.
Weapons control advocates have strongly called for the retention of New START and warned that its expiration would remove any control over U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.
Last week, Russia also stated that it would follow the US to allow from the Open Skies Treaty to allow surveillance flights over military facilities to create trust and transparency between Russia and the West.
While Russia has always offered to extend New START by five years – a possibility envisaged by the treaty – Trump has claimed that it is lagging behind the US and initially insisted that China be added to the treaty. an idea that Beijing completely rejected. The Trump administration then proposed extending New START for just one year and also trying to extend it to restrictions on nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Moscow has said it remains open to new nuclear arms negotiations with the US to negotiate future restrictions on prospective weapons, but stressed that maintaining New START is essential for global stability.
Russian diplomats said Russia’s prospective heavy intercontinental Sarmat ballistic missile and the Avangard hypersonic glider, along with other Russian nuclear weapons, could be counted under the treaty.
The Sarmat is still under development, while the first missile unit armed with the Avangard went into operation in December 2019.
The Russian military says the Avangard is capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound and can make sharp maneuvers on its way to a target to bypass missile defense systems. It was mounted on the existing Soviet-built intercontinental ballistic missiles instead of older heads, and could be fitted in the future for the more powerful Sarmat.