Russia Will Stick to Nuclear Arms Limits if US Does Too

Illustration of Russia's Topol-M ICBM. (Wikimedia Commons/Vitaly V. Kuzmin)

JAKARTA - Russia on Wednesday said it would abide by nuclear arms limits set in a Cold War-era arms control treaty with the United States, as long as Washington did the same.

The New START treaty - the last agreement between the world's two largest nuclear powers - expires this month, with Washington not responding to Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer of a one-year extension of the limits on each side's nuclear weapons.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was in no rush to start developing and deploying more weapons, retracting his ministry's comments last week that Russia considered itself no longer bound by the treaty's provisions.

"We depart from the fact that this moratorium, announced by our president, remains in force, but only as long as the United States does not exceed the limits that have been set," Lavrov said in a speech to the Russian Parliament, launching Al Arabiya from AFP (11/2).

Both the United States and Russia have indicated they want to reach a new arms control agreement.

Washington has pushed for China to be included in the talks, pointing to China's growing nuclear arsenal.

Moscow, meanwhile, said that if China was included in the new deal, then the United States' nuclear allies, Britain and France, should also be included.

The end of the New START Treaty, which limits the United States and Russia to only 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, marks the first time in decades that there is no agreement to limit the deployment of the most destructive weapons on the planet, sparking fears of a new arms race.

US President Donald Trump said New START was "badly negotiated" and "being flagrantly violated."

In 2023, Russia refused to inspect its nuclear sites under the agreement, as tensions with the United States over the conflict in Ukraine escalated.

However, Russia said it remained committed to the quantitative limits it had set.