Ryabkov explained the reasons for the cancellation of the meeting between Russia and the United States on START

The meeting of the commission on the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START) was canceled because the United States did not want to reckon with Russia’s priorities, said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

“We were faced with a situation where our American colleagues in a number of areas demonstrated not only an unwillingness to perceive our signals, to reckon with our priorities, but acted in the opposite direction,” Ryabkov noted (quote according to TASS).

According to him, the decision to cancel the commission was taken by Moscow at the political level. At the same time, the Russian side sees that the United States is focused exclusively on the resumption of START inspections, and does not record the desire of the Americans to move further along the priority areas for the Russian Federation in this area.

Ryabkov said earlier today that Moscow would offer Washington new dates for the meeting, but don’t expect a new meeting to take place before the end of the year.

On November 29, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that the START talks between Moscow and Washington had been postponed to a later date. The United States, in turn, announced its readiness to hold a meeting of the commission on START as soon as possible.

START-3 was concluded in 2010 for 10 years, it was extended for another five years in 2021 with the coming to power of the administration of President Joe Biden. It is now the last arms control treaty between Russia and the United States in force. It provided for the reduction of strategic weapons to 700 deployed (and 800 in total) carriers (submarines, intercontinental missiles and heavy bombers) and 1,550 deployed warheads.

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