Russia thinks that the chance is disappearing for its consent to the new Pact to replace the last US nuclear weapon contract, which will expire at the beginning of next year, said the highest weapons control officer.
The main obstacle to any agreement is the state of US Russian ties, which is “in ruins”, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in an interview for the State Intelligence Service on Friday.
“There are no reasons for the restoration of a new start contract,” Ryabkov said, according to TASS. “Since the contract reaches the end of its life cycle in about eight months, every discussion of the realism of such a scenario becomes increasingly insignificant.”
In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his participation in a new nuclear agreement, although Moscow has undertaken that it will continue to comply with its conditions until the agreement expires. In April, Russia said it continues to respect Pact limits for nuclear arsenals that limit each side to 1,550 strategic heads deployed.
At that time, US President Joe Biden expanded the contract by five years by 2026 as one of his first acts when entering the office in 2021 shortly before it was out. During his first term of office, Putin forced President Donald Trump to agree with the agreement.
The end of the contract would mean that the US will lose access to inspection and monitoring data on the number of Russian nuclear warheads as well as land and seafood used to start them.
The potential loss of the mechanism of control of nuclear weapons comes in the middle of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in the fourth year, which caused the worst tension with the West in decades. Trump’s efforts to resolve the conflict have not yet met without success, although his administration has launched interviews with Moscow to restore diplomatic operations after the contacts were interrupted after the war.
(Tagstotranslate) Nuclear weapons control
