MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. The latest remarks of US President Donald Trump’s administration regarding an extension of the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) are fidgety, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday in an interview with Russian and foreign media dedicated to the current issues on the international agenda.
"We are reading rather fidgety comments from deep inside the Trump administration. They say that Russia has little time to decide who it wants to sign the treaty with, [whether it chooses] Trump or if it wants to gift it all to Biden. Or if it still wants to make Trump’s day for him to steal the foreign policy triumph," he said.
The minister underlined that Russia is interested in all parties winning in this situation. "All sides can win, as far as the New START extension is concerned, only if this treaty is extended without any additional conditions," Lavrov added.
The top diplomat pointed out that the US had lately put forward a multitude of additional conditions to extend the treaty which are unacceptable to Russia. "We have already been in the situation when American inspectors were sitting at the entrances of our defense industries. It was in the 1990s and there will never be a return to this system, as you understand," the minister noted. "I don’t know what there’s more of here, interest in real dialogue on strategic stability to ensure security of your own country, your allies and humanity as a whole, or, as it seems to me, there’s more of publicity stunt to boost your reputation," Lavrov concluded.
Election hype
Moscow does not expect any realistic proposals from the US on extending the New START as yet as the presidential election hype continues to run high in the country and will wait until the situation calms down, the Russian foreign minister stated.
"I think that now, when the US is buzzing amid vote counting, lawsuits and other perturbations, we are unlikely to get any clear-cut proposals, which would be realistic and not intertwined with the current domestic trends in America, from either Trump’s people or Biden’s future team. Therefore, we will wait until it all dials down," the minister noted.
Lavrov reminded reporters that Russia needs the New START extension as much as the US. "We would very much like to extend it and we have put everything on the table to achieve that. The ball is in the Americans’ court. If the response is negative, well, we will survive without this treaty. We have everything to ensure our security," Russia's top diplomat pointed out.
Moscow and Washington signed the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms in 2010. Under its terms, either country must reduce its strategic offensive arms in such a way that at the end of the seventh year following its entry into force and later on their overall amounts should not exceed 700 units of deployed inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers, 1,550 warheads and 800 operational and non-operational missile launchers and strategic bombers.
The treaty was concluded for a period of ten years (until February 5, 2021). It can be replaced by a follow-up agreement before the deadline expires, or prolonged for no more than five years (until 2026) by mutual consent.
On October 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed extending the New START by at least a year without any additional conditions. According to him, this will provide time to conduct substantial talks. In turn, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia is ready to freeze its nuclear arsenals with the US in case the treaty is extended and no additional demands are put forward by Washington.