A Russian Topol-M strategic nuclear missile appears on Moscow’s Red Square during the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russia, 9 May 2013. Photo: EPA / Sergei Ilnitsky
The last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia is set to expire on Thursday with attempts to negotiate a new deal having been held.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) was signed in Prague in April 2010 by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a time of significantly warmer relations between Washington and Moscow, coming four years before the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea.
The conditions of the deal meant that it could only be extended once, by five years in 2021, meaning its expiration on 5 February 2026 was a foregone conclusion, the NGO International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said on Wednesday.
“If it expires, it expires” US President Donald Trump told The New York Times last month when asked about the treaty’s approaching end date, despite the fact that when asked about the treaty in July, he had said “that's not an agreement you want expiring”, in comments reported by Reuters.
Addressing New START’s expiration in Russia in September, Putin lambasted the “profoundly hostile policies” of the US administration under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, noting that it had led to the full implementation of the treaty being suspended in 2023. However, Putin also pledged that, to avoid a new nuclear arms race, Russia would continue to observe the core terms of the treaty for one year after its expiration.
Despite becoming an outspoken hawk who has called for nuclear strikes to be launched against Ukraine and other Western states on more than one occasion, Medvedev on Monday echoed Putin’s September speech, stressing the importance of having controls on nuclear armaments and Russia’s willingness to extend the terms of New START.
Despite both sides indicating at least a partial willingness to discuss a new treaty, no substantive talks on a new framework have been discussed, sparking fears of a fresh arms race between the planet’s two largest nuclear powers. According to the Guardian, both countries have over 1,700 nuclear weapons deployed and a greater number in storage, dwarfing the combined arsenals of the other seven nuclear-armed powers.
The terms of the treaty stipulated a limit of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, a restriction 74% lower than the one agreed upon 19 years prior in the 1991 START Treaty, signed by US President George HW Bush and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
In its report on the treaty’s expiration, ICAN said that while fears of a new arms race and the reversal of decades of progress in arms reduction were warranted, the two states were still subject to legal obligations to negotiate nuclear disarmament in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was was signed in 1968 and is up for review later this year.
