The subject is one of the few on which Moscow still has leverage over Washington. Tuesday, February 21, Vladimir Putin announced ” to suspend “ Russia’s participation in the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty. “They want to inflict a strategic defeat on us, attack our nuclear sites (…) and we should act as if nothing had happened”, launched the Russian president to justify his decision, during his address to the nation.
The mention of “nuclear sites” could refer to the two drone strikes carried out by the Ukrainian army on the Engels airfield, in December 2022, in the Saratov region, where Tupolevs from the Russian strategic fleet are notably parked.
Signed in 2010, the New Start treaty is the last bilateral agreement of its kind linking Russians and Americans. It limits the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550 (against 2,200 previously) from each of the parties and the number of launchers to 700. But its main added value lies in the mutual verification missions between Russian and American experts.
“Maintaining a responsible approach”
This effort of transparency, however, ended up blowing up. In March 2020, inspections were suspended due to Covid-19. In August 2022, Russia formally closed access to its nuclear sites for American inspectors. In November, she canceled a meeting of the bilateral commission, scheduled for Cairo. Without minimizing the importance of the decision taken by Vladimir Putin, the latter formalizes an already gray reality.
Moscow will continue to respect the limitation imposed on its nuclear arsenal, however, assured the Russian Foreign Ministry in the process. “Russia intends to maintain a responsible approach”, the ministry said in a statement. Russia has no interest, in view of its gigantic needs in terms of conventional armaments, to take the initiative of a nuclear arms race.
It was former President Barack Obama who signed this treaty in 2010 with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev. At the time, he had made it one of the cornerstones of his foreign policy as well as a success on the domestic level, by snatching the two-thirds majority in the Senate. For his part, once elected, Donald Trump had criticized New Start, in 2017, during an interview with Vladimir Putin.
When he arrived at the White House in January 2021, Joe Biden had no dream of reviving bilateral relations with Moscow. His ambition was to make them predictable, to limit Russia’s external harmfulness, to find a handful of subjects for compromise. Arms limitation was at the top of the list.
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