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Russia’s New START suspension

Senior Russian diplomat skeptical about possible restoration of New START

"The treaty is doomed unless the US shows readiness to really change its deeply hostile policy against Russia," Sergey Ryabkov said

MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. The odds are low that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will be restored, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Wednesday.

"As for its possible restoration, I don’t think the odds are high," he told the Sputnik radio station.

"The treaty is doomed unless the US shows readiness to really change its deeply hostile policy against Russia," Ryabkov added.

On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow was suspending its participation in the New START treaty but was not withdrawing from it. The head of state emphasized that before resuming discussions of further activities under the treaty, Russia needed to figure out for itself how the arsenals of NATO’s other nuclear-weapons countries, the UK and France, would be taken into account along with US capacities. Putin signed a law suspending Russia’s participation in the treaty on March 1.

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