New START treaty ending – Moscow
The New START treaty, which limits the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, officially expires on February 5, and Moscow has not received any formal response from the US on renewing it, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday.
Russia will be ready to decisively counter potential threats, but will remain open to dialogue after the lapse of the last remaining strategic arms control agreement with the US, it added.
Last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly made a stopgap proposal, offering to keep observing the treaty’s limits on armaments for another year after it expired on February 5, provided the US responded in kind.
“Our ideas have been deliberately left unanswered,” the ministry said. Moscow now assumes “that the parties to the New START are no longer bound by any obligations or symmetrical declarations,” it added.
The Russian Federation intends to act responsibly and in a balanced manner, developing its policy in the field of strategic offensive arms on the basis of a thorough analysis of the US military policy and the overall situation in the strategic sphere.
Simultaneously, Moscow remains ready to seek political and diplomatic ways to “comprehensively stabilize the strategic situation on the basis of equal and mutually beneficial dialogue solutions,” the ministry said.
The New START Treaty, which was signed in 2010 and extended in 2021, caps the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads and launchers and sets out monitoring mechanisms for both Russian and US arsenals.
Moscow suspended the verification mechanisms of the treaty in 2023, citing Ukrainian strikes on elements of Russia’s nuclear deterrence and accusing the West of actively being involved.
In the meantime, the lapse of New START will leave the world’s two biggest nuclear superpowers with no guardrails on their nuclear arsenals.
Last week, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the ‘Doomsday Clock’ five seconds closer to midnight, and warned of a looming “full-blow arms race” between major powers.
