MOSCOW, January 27. /TASS/. The Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) do not concern the newest weapons or those still in the development phase. In all likelihood separate talks will have to be conducted on them and a new agreement concluded, the Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of US and Canadian Studies, Valery Garbuzov, told TASS in an interview. In his opinion, time is not ripe for this yet.
"This treaty does not concern new weapon systems - the weapons that have begun to be developed or enter duty in Russia or the United States," he explained. "In all likelihood, negotiations will have to be conducted on these types of weapons and some fundamentally new treaty concluded."
Garbuzov warned that "in this respect the arms race has not peaked yet."
The two sides will develop the awareness of the need for establishing control of new types of weapons when considerable potentials of new weapons have been created and built up," he believes.
"This will have to be done, of course, but the issue is not on the current agenda," he concluded.
Russia and the United States signed the New START treaty in 2010. It is expiring on February 5, 2021. The treaty establishes caps on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers. The agreement can be extended by five years by mutual consent.
The previous Donald Trump-led administration put forward a number of preconditions for extending New START, such as expanding the list of participants. When the new president, Joe Biden, took over, the White House expressed the readiness to extend the treaty. The two countries have already exchanged notes about the achievement of corresponding agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted the bill to parliament for ratification.