According to the Kremlin, diplomats from the USA and Russia are working on extending the last remaining nuclear disarmament treaty between the two countries. “There are signs of this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, according to the Interfax news agency. At the same time, he warned that little progress has been made so far and that time is running out. This is the New Start Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Weapons.
The acronym Start stands for Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. The first start contract was signed in 1982 between then US President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday. As New Start or Start III, it was last extended for five years in early 2021.
Most recently, however, the Russian Foreign Ministry had suspended checks on nuclear weapons stocks because Russian inspectors could no longer fly to the USA because of the sanctions that followed Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
The resumption of the talks is of equal interest for both sides, “yes for the whole world”, emphasized Peskow. “So far, however, there has been no significant progress, and time is shrinking like shagreen leather,” warned the 54-year-old.