Lavrov: The United States asks to resume contacts on strategic stability

Washington is raising the topic of resuming negotiations on strategic stability, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a speech at the Knowledge Society marathon as part of the Russia exhibition.

“They [США] they handed us a paper where they began to set out their calls, known to us for quite a long time, about the need to resume contacts on strategic stability, [поскольку] we bear responsibility as nuclear powers,” the minister said.

Russia was ready for such contacts, and the result was the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START), which “we were forced to suspend.” “In the sense that we will not carry out the procedures that are provided for in this agreement. Although we will maintain the quantitative limits established in it,” Lavrov clarified. Such procedures, he said, consist of periodic meetings of the bilateral control commission and inspections of each other’s nuclear facilities.

Lavrov asks how US representatives can be allowed into Russian nuclear facilities when they are supplying Ukraine with long-range weapons that “have already been used in attempted attacks on strategic nuclear bomber bases.”

“Most likely, in order to prepare these attacks, the Americans not only provided weapons, but also helped with information in order to try to hit the relevant targets,” he added.

Lavrov noted that this is “the only essential topic” on which there were appeals from the United States. The European Union, according to the minister, has not made any “similar approaches”, and, moreover, Brussels has adopted a “special circular” that prohibits EU diplomats in the Russian Federation from having contacts with Russian colleagues.

In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in his message that Moscow had decided to suspend the New START Treaty. He motivated this decision by the fact that in the context of hostilities in Ukraine, US inspections of Russian enterprises and other facilities could be used to harm the interests of Russia.

New START was signed in 2010 by Russian and US presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama. The document talked about reducing strategic nuclear forces (SNF) to the level of 700 deployed and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic delivery vehicles. The agreement provided for detailed inspections at the sites of production and deployment of strategic nuclear weapons carriers and the exchange of telemetry data during testing of new types of missiles.

On November 2, the Russian President signed a law revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Putin raised the issue of the need to revoke ratification at a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club on October 5. At the same time, he clarified that he cannot say now whether Russia needs nuclear weapons tests or not.