Russia says will stick to New START's nuclear arms limits as long as US does

MOSCOW: Moscow will observe the limits of the last nuclear arms pact with the United States that expired last week as long as it sees that Washington is doing the same, Russia's top diplomat said on Wednesday (Feb 11).

The New START treaty expired on Feb 5, leaving no restrictions on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than half a century and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but US President Donald Trump has argued that he wants China to be a part of a new pact - something Beijing has rejected.

REMARKS TO RUSSIAN LAWMAKERS

Speaking on Wednesday to the parliament's lower house, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that even though the US has not responded to Putin's offer, Russia will respect New START's caps for as long as it sees that the US observes them too.

“The moratorium declared by the president will remain as long as the US doesn't exceed these limits,” Lavrov told lawmakers. 

"We will act in a responsible and balanced way on the basis of analysis of the US military policies.”

He added that “we have reason to believe that the US is in no hurry to abandon these limits and that they will be observed for the foreseeable future”.

“We will closely monitor how things are actually unfolding," Lavrov said. 

"If our American colleagues’ intention to maintain some kind of cooperation on this is confirmed, we will work actively on a new agreement and consider the issues that have remained outside strategic stability agreements."

US-RUSSIA TALKS

Lavrov's statement followed a report by Axios claiming Russian and US negotiators discussed a possible informal deal to observe the pact’s limits for at least six months during talks last week in Abu Dhabi. 

Asked to comment on the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that any such extension could only be formal, adding that “it’s hard to imagine any informal extension in this sphere”.

At the same time, Peskov confirmed that Russian and US negotiators discussed future nuclear arms control in Abu Dhabi where delegations from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington held two days of talks on a peace settlement in Ukraine.

“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions and both parties realise the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible,” Peskov said.

NEW START TREATY LIMITS

New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, was the last of a long series of agreements between Moscow and Washington to limit their nuclear arsenals, starting with SALT I in 1972.

New START restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers deployed and ready for use. It was originally set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years.

The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia could not allow US inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies openly declared they wanted Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine. 

But the Kremlin also emphasised it was not withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

In September, Putin offered to keep the New START’s limits for another year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement.

Even as New START expired, the US and Russia agreed on Feb 5 to re-establish high-level, military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between senior officials from both sides in Abu Dhabi, the US military command in Europe said. 

The link was suspended in 2021 as relations grew increasingly strained before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.