Russia says it is prepared for a new reality in which there are no U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control limits once the New START treaty expires this week, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
Unless Moscow and Washington reach a last-minute understanding, the two countries will be left without any constraints on their long-range strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time in more than 50 years when the treaty expires on Thursday.
“This is a new moment, a new reality - we are ready for it,” Ryabkov, was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies during a visit to Beijing for what he described as “strategic stability consultations”.
New START, signed in 2010, caps the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550. U.S. President Donald Trump indicated last month that he would allow the treaty to expire, though he has not formally responded to a Russian proposal to continue observing the missile and warhead limits for one more year.
“The lack of an answer is also an answer,” Ryabkov said.
Arms control supporters in both Russia and the United States warn that the expiry would remove limits on warheads, weaken verification and undermine trust, increasing the risk of a renewed nuclear arms race.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama, who signed the treaty with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, urged the U.S. Congress to intervene, warning that allowing the pact to lapse would “wipe out decades of diplomacy” and make the world less safe.
Medvedev said the world should be alarmed if the treaty expires without any understanding of what comes next, suggesting it would accelerate movement of the so-called “Doomsday Clock”.
Ryabkov also said Russia would take military measures if the United States deployed missile defence systems in Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO-member Denmark.
The web of nuclear arms control agreements built after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has gradually unravelled in recent years, amid worsening relations between Moscow and the West over Ukraine and growing U.S. concern about China’s nuclear arsenal.
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