NEW YORK, April 20. /TASS/. The United States must revise its hostile policy and drop its course toward escalating threats to Russia’s security in order to restore the New START treaty, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said in a commentary published by the Newsweek magazine on Wednesday.
"What needs to be done to return to the Treaty's full-scale functioning? The answer is simple. The U.S. has to reconsider its hostile policy toward our country and abandon its course of escalating threats to Russia's national security," he said.
Instead, the White House says that "Washington will not stop 'pouring oil on the fire' of the Ukrainian crisis," he went on to say. "Apparently, resolving the Treaty issues is not a priority for the [U.S.] Administration. This is a regrettable choice. However, this logic is fully consistent with the U.S. long-term policy aimed at undermining arms control regime."
Moscow, in his words, "will not follow the American example." "We remain committed to a responsible approach to strategic stability," Antonov stressed. "We intend to voluntarily adhere to the central quantitative limits on strategic offensive arms stipulated in the Treaty. In addition, we will continue to participate in the exchange of notifications with the U.S. on ICBM and SLBM launches in accordance with the respective 1988 U.S.-Soviet agreement."
"We believe these measures to be sufficient to ensure predictability in the relations between the major nuclear powers," he added.
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) but is not withdrawing from it. The president stressed that before returning to the discussion of the extension of the New START treaty, the Russian side wants to understand how the treaty will take into account not only the United States’ arsenals but also stockpiles of other NATO nuclear powers, namely the United Kingdom and France. On March 1, the president signed a law on the suspension of Russia’s participation in New START.