WNAM REPORT: Russia will not be offering anything to anyone regarding the New START Treaty, which expires next year, and there have been no bilateral initiatives from US President Donald Trump’s administration, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview.
“Donald Trump’s administration has offered to sit down ‘at three’ with China regarding this issue. They’re not offering us anything,” Lavrov noted. “We are not going to offer anything to anyone as well, because we are not the ones who ruined the tools of arms control, the START III Treaty.”
“The basic principles without which it could not take place were refused by the [former US President] Joe Biden administration,” the Russian foreign minister said. “The Trump administration has not yet returned to these principles, although the dialogue is underway regarding many issues.”
“We’re self-sufficient. We have everything. We know how to ensure our defense capability,” Lavrov pointed out.
“If they feel that their nuclear arsenals are very outdated and continue to become obsolete against the backdrop of our upgraded weapons, then they should be probably interested in somehow correcting this discrepancy. We have not received any such proposals,” he added.
New START Treaty
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 21, 2023, that Moscow was suspending its participation in New START Treaty but was not withdrawing from it. The head of state emphasized that before resuming discussions about further activities under the treaty, Russia needed to understand how the arsenals of NATO’s other nuclear-weapons countries, the UK and France, would be taken into account along with US capacities.
The treaty stipulated that seven years after its entry into effect, each party should have no more than a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and strategic bombers, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and strategic bombers.
The ten-year treaty was to expire in February 2021, when Moscow and Washington agreed to extend it for a maximum period of five years, with Russia describing it as the gold standard of disarmament accords.
