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Washington’s actions undermine viability of New START, Moscow says

The problem of Washington’s unilateral and illegitimate decision to make hundreds of strategic offensive weapons unaccountable under the New START treaty remains unsettled, the Foreign Ministry said

MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. Washington’s actions to make hundreds of weapons unaccountable under the New START undermine the viability of this treaty, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary following the publication of a US Department of State report on compliance with arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation agreements.

The problem of Washington’s unilateral and illegitimate decision to make hundreds of strategic offensive weapons unaccountable under the New START treaty remains unsettled, the Foreign Ministry said. It recalled that by February 5, 2018 Russia and the United States were to reduce the overall amounts of their strategic offensive weapons to levels stated in Article 2 of the Treaty and to refrain from exceeding these levels from that moment on. Russia coped with its pledge, which was recognized by Washington, but Russia has remained unable to verify whether Washington has achieved the levels established under the New START treaty, too.

"In reality, Washington’s declared overall amount of deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers and launchers for strategic missiles (800) is considerably exceeded. Washington has groundlessly and illegitimately refused to count 56 launchers of ballistic missiles on submarines and 41 heavy bombers B-52H. It was declared that these weapons had been converted to a condition that allegedly rules out their nuclear capability. Russia has been given no chance to check and verify or refute the results of the ‘conversion’ reportedly carried out by the Americans, contrary to Item 3, Section 1, Part 3 of the Protocol to the Treaty," the commentary states.

"This problem Washington has created obviously undermines the viability of the Treaty and directly affects the outlook for its prolongation. The search for ways of settling this issue has failed to bring about a settlement of the problem to this day," the Foreign Ministry said.

Russia will stay adamant the United States "should not try to create unilateral advantages for it and strictly and fully comply with all New START provisions, which after Washington’s dismantling of the INF Treaty remains the last international treaty restricting the Russian and US nuclear-missile potential and makes the activity in this field predictable and mutually verifiable.".