The State Duma and the Federation Council unanimously supported the suspension of participation in START III

First, the State Duma, and then the Federation Council (SF) at its extraordinary meeting unanimously approved the presidential bill to suspend Russia’s participation in the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START III) with the United States. Vladimir Putin announced the decision to suspend the last Russian-American arms control treaty during his address to the Federal Assembly the day before. Senators at an unscheduled meeting concluded that this decision was forced and was associated with a “radical change in circumstances”, which is enshrined in Art. 62 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

It is noteworthy that when an unscheduled meeting was scheduled, the senators declared intention to consider amendments to the Budget and Tax Code, which will come into force on March 1.

The suspension of START-III was considered by the Federation Council as the first issue. The deputy speaker of the upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, who presented the bill, said that the senators are considering the treaty for the third time. For the first time, senators unanimously ratified the agreement in January 2011, and 10 years later they also unanimously extended it. According to Kosachev, the decision to extend the extension was made consciously, with the expectation “that he [договор] and will continue to be carried out by the parties irreproachably.”

“Two years later, we return to this issue for the third time, but with a different position. Does this mean that the position of the Russian Federation has somehow changed? My answer is no. We remain convinced that the agreement, in the form in which it was concluded and observed by the parties for a long time, meets the global security interests and the interests of the Russian Federation,” said the Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council. At the same time, according to him, the US approaches to the implementation of START III have changed “by 180 degrees.”

Kosachev said that “from a certain moment the Americans ceased to fulfill these obligations”: they did not issue visas to Russian inspectors, denied admission to certain facilities and banned the flights of Russian aircraft. This was also pointed out by Viktor Bondarev, head of the Federation Council committee on defense. In addition, the American side, according to Kosachev, began to “cheat” with numbers and try to withdraw more than 100 strategic offensive weapons from the treaty, “thus encroaching on the strict balance stipulated by the treaty both in terms of warheads and launch vehicles.”

“In the last year, the United States directly ranked the Russian Federation among its adversary, its enemy, declared the task of military defeat of Russia and causing Russia, the citizens of the Russian Federation, that means all of us, possibly great suffering and upheaval. Under these conditions, the President of the Russian Federation unambiguously states that the changed conditions and the US’s consistent non-compliance with its obligations under the agreement are a fundamental change in circumstances,” Kosachev said, adding that Washington’s goal is to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow.

Lyudmila Narusova, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, decided to find out from the speaker whether the suspension of participation in START III meant a change in the status of Russian nuclear weapons regulated by the treaty from defensive to offensive. Kosachev replied that the status of Russian strategic forces and nuclear weapons “does not change in any way”, since it is defined in doctrinal documents. According to him, the decision to suspend participation in START III “means the readiness of the Russian side to comply with all the restrictions that are provided for in it, to comply, if you like, on a voluntary basis.”

This, the vice-speaker of the chamber noted, also follows from the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry explaining the situation. “Such a formula theoretically leaves room for a return to the regime of compliance with the treaty,” Kosachev specified. To do this, according to him, “it is necessary to clarify the intentions of the other two nuclear powers that are part of the North Atlantic Alliance – France and Great Britain. We know that recently NATO has been calling itself a nuclear bloc and is conducting some joint nuclear operations.”

“Personally, I believe that the United States is unlikely to consider it necessary or possible to reaffirm these commitments. It was not for this that they once withdrew from a whole complex of disarmament agreements. <...> Without clarification in the algorithm of actions of France and Great Britain, from my point of view, the resumption of our full-scale participation in this agreement is simply impossible and does not meet the national interests of the Russian Federation,” Kosachev concluded.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Ryabkov, who was present at the meeting of the Federation Council, also spoke about the “deeply hostile course” pursued by Washington towards the Russian Federation, and the US plans to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. In particular, he recalled the strikes on long-range aviation facilities in the Ryazan and Saratov regions on December 5, 2022. According to the high-ranking diplomat, “this happened only and exclusively because of the comprehensive support from the United States, possibly other NATO allies.”

“A radical change in circumstances is, first of all, not only and not so much a violation by the Americans of the very spirit of the treaty, but rather their line of confrontation with us. Under these conditions, it is also impossible to conduct business as before, as usual in the key, most important area of ​​arms control,” Ryabkov said.

The first deputy head of the Council of Federation Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in the past, the long-term Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergei Kislyak, said that if the goal of the United States is to inflict a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation: “The question arises – the mechanisms of the treaty, if they remain, will they serve to build confidence or achieve the goal , which was supplied by the USA? In his opinion, “in such conditions, the political contract runs the risk of becoming the opposite of its original goals.”

“The draft law that we are considering provides for the possibility of renewing the agreement. This is a signal to the West – if they have the wisdom to think, we will be ready to return to work in this agreement, ”Kislyak said. However, he immediately added that he had “quite strong doubts about the wisdom of the West.”

The Federation Council approved the presidential law with 157 votes – that is how many senators were present at the meeting.