In the midst of the confrontation with the West over the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday the suspension of his country's compliance with START III or New START, the last nuclear disarmament treaty still in force between Russia and the US. A decision that the president wanted to separate from the invasion, but for which he blamed Washington.
Signed by then US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dimitri Medvedev in 2010, the treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads the US and Russia can deploy.
It entered into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for a further five years after US President Joe Biden took office. It authorizes US and Russian inspectors to make inspections of each other's stockpiles to make sure both sides are complying with the treaty.
Inspections under the agreement were suspended in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Talks between Moscow and Washington on the resumption of inspections were to take place last November in Egypt, but Russia decided at the last minute to postpone it indefinitely due to Washington's "unwillingness" to take Russia's priorities into account. Neither party set a new date.
The United States had already suspended the dialogue on arms control months before, after Russia's war intervention in Ukraine. Russia in turn informed Washington in August of its decision to ban US on-site inspections of its arsenal of nuclear weapons, citing difficulties in doing the same in the US due to Western sanctions on flight permits and granting of visas to Russian officials.
The New START had to reduce the number of nuclear warheads by 30%, up to 1,550 per country. In addition, it limited to 700 the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, those deployed in submarines and strategic bombers equipped for nuclear weapons. It also reduced to 800 the number of intercontinental missile launchers, submarine ballistic missile launchers and nuclear-equipped strategic bombers, whether deployed or not.
Putin stated that "if the US conducts nuclear tests with a new type of strategic weapon, Russia will carry out tests" of that kind. "Of course, we will not be the first to do so (...). No one should harbor the dangerous illusion that strategic global parity can be destroyed," he commented.
Likewise, the Russian president described as "theater of the absurd" the statement in which NATO demanded that Russia comply with said treaty, which includes inspections of its nuclear facilities. In this regard, he advocated for the Atlantic Alliance to become part of the treaty, since, he recalled, countries like the United Kingdom and France also have nuclear arsenals.
Russia claimed earlier this month that it wanted to preserve the treaty, even as it criticized what it saw as a destructive approach by the United States to arms control.
Together, Russia and the United States account for about 90% of the world's nuclear warheads, and both sides have stressed that war between nuclear powers must be avoided at all costs. However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed the two countries closer to direct confrontation than at any time in the last 60 years.
