MOSCOW (AP) – The Kremlin on Friday welcomed the proposal by US President Joe Biden to extend the latest nuclear weapons control treaty between the two countries, which is due to expire in less than two weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia is defending the extension of the pact and waiting to see the details of the US proposal.
The White House said on Thursday that Biden proposed to Russia a five-year extension of the new START treaty.
“We can only welcome the political will to extend the document,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “But everything will depend 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 nuclear warheads and 700 missiles and bombers, and provides for local inspections to verify compliance. It expires on February 5.
Russia has long proposed to extend the pact without any conditions or changes, but President Donald Trump’s government waited until last year to start negotiations and made the extension dependent on a set of requirements. Negotiations have stalled and months of negotiation have failed to narrow the differences.
“Certain conditions for the extension have been presented, and some of them have been absolutely unacceptable to us, so let’s first see what the US is offering,” said Peskov.
Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, also welcomed Biden’s proposal as an “encouraging step”.
“The extension will give both sides more time to consider possible additional measures to strengthen strategic stability and global security,” he tweeted.
Biden indicated during the campaign that he was in favor of preserving the new START treaty, which was negotiated during his tenure as vice president of the United States.
Negotiations over the extension of the treaty were also clouded by tensions between Russia and the United States, which were fueled by the Ukrainian crisis, Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and other irritating factors.
Despite the proposed extension, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden remains committed to holding Russia accountable “for its reckless and adversarial actions”, such as his alleged involvement in the hacking event Solar Winds, interference in the 2020 elections and the opposition’s chemical poisoning features Alexei Navalny and the widely publicized allegations that Russia may have offered rewards to the Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Asked to comment on Psaki’s statement, Peskov reaffirmed Russia’s denial of involvement in such activities.
After Moscow and Washington withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, the New START is the only remaining nuclear weapons control agreement between the two countries.
Gun control advocates vehemently called for the preservation of the New START, warning that its lapse would remove any control over American and Russian nuclear forces.
Last week, Russia also declared that it would follow the United States in withdrawing the Open Skies Treaty, which allows surveillance flights over military facilities to help build trust and transparency between Russia and the West.
Although Russia has always offered to extend the New START for five years – a possibility envisaged by the pact – Trump said it put the U.S. at a disadvantage and initially insisted that China be included in the treaty, an idea that Beijing categorically rejected. The Trump administration then proposed extending the New START for just one year and also sought to expand it to include limits on nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Moscow said it remains open for new nuclear weapons negotiations with the United States to negotiate future limits on potential weapons, but emphasized that preserving the New START is essential to global stability.
Russian diplomats said Russia’s future Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile and the hypersonic glider Avangard can be counted along with other Russian nuclear weapons under the treaty.
Sarmat is still in development, while the first Avangard-armed missile unit went into operation in December 2019.
The Russian military said the Avangard is capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound and can make sudden maneuvers on its way to a target to bypass missile defense systems. It was installed on existing Soviet-built intercontinental ballistic missiles, instead of older type warheads, and in the future could be installed on the more powerful Sarmat.