MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. A decision has not been made yet on when a meeting of the Russia-US Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) to discuss the New START Treaty will be convened, and the issue should not be considered separately from the situation in Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday.
"As for the timing, we have not resolved this issue yet. We cannot view the situation around the BCC outside the context of the increasingly hostile attitude on the part of the United States toward Russia," Ryabkov said, taking a question from a TASS reporter. He referred to what he said were more and more dangerous weapons being relentlessly pumped into Ukraine and the deeper involvement of the US in the conflict.
Last week, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov stressed that Moscow had been impeccably observing New START over the years — in contrast to Washington. The diplomat drew attention to the fact that the responsibility for the escalation of tensions over the treaty should be placed squarely on the United States. In particular, he commented on a report prepared earlier by the US Department of State saying that Russia was allegedly in breach of New START. It argued that full compliance required inspections on its territory, and also consent to a BCC meeting.
Antonov complained earlier that various restrictions imposed by Washington and its allies against Moscow effectively rendered Russian inspections under New START in the US impossible. According to him, the lack of regular flights between Russia and the US, the closure of airspace to Russian aircraft by US allies and problems in obtaining transit visas for inspectors and flight crews created conditions, "which impede, if not block," Moscow’s ability to conduct inspections on US territory.
The treaty between the United States and Russia on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the New START Treaty) was signed in 2010 and entered into force on February 5, 2011.
The document stipulated that seven years after its entry into effect, each party should have no more than a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and strategic bombers, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and strategic bombers.
In February 2021, Moscow and Washington extended the treaty, described by the Russian authorities as the gold standard in the sphere of disarmament, for the maximum term of five years.