Russia welcomes US proposal to expand nuclear treaty

Moscow, Russia – The Kremlin on Friday welcomed the proposal by US President Joe Biden to to extend in five years the last existing nuclear arms control treaty between the two nations, Which is expected to expire in less than two weeks.

Russia is in favor of extending the deal and is waiting to see details of the US proposal, said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The White House announced Thursday that Biden had proposed to Moscow to extend the New START treaty by five years.

“We can only celebrate the political will to spread the document,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “But it will all depend on the details of the proposal.”

The pact, signed in 2010 by then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, as well as 700 missiles and bombers, and provides for extensive field inspections to verify compliance. It expires on February 5th.

Russia had long been proposing to extend the treaty without conditions or changes, but the government of former President Donald Trump waited until last year to start talks and made the extension conditional on a series of demands. The dialogue stalled and months of negotiations failed to close the gap.

“Certain conditions had been proposed for enlargement, and some of them were totally unacceptable to us, so let’s first look at what the United States has to offer,” Peskov noted.

Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, also praised Biden’s proposal, calling it an “encouraging step.”

“The enlargement will give both parties more time to consider possible additional measures aimed at strengthening strategic stability and global security,” he tweeted.

During the election campaign, Biden indicated that he was in favor of maintaining the New START, which was negotiated during his time as U.S. vice president.

The dialogue to extend the treaty was also clouded by tensions between Moscow and Washington, fueled by the crisis in Ukraine and Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections, among other factors.