Kremlin: Putin and Biden agree to disarmament treaty

Biden called Putin for the first time, that was the result

After the Kremlin’s announcement, Russia and the United States reached an agreement to extend the New Start nuclear disarmament treaty. The corresponding diplomatic notes were exchanged on Tuesday, the Kremlin said in the evening after a President Vladimir Putin made a phone call to his American colleague Joe Biden. According to the AP, Biden also called for the release of Russian opposition member Navalny.

Both parties had previously declared their willingness to extend the last disarmament agreement for five years, which expired in early February. The New Beginning Treaty on the Limitation of Nuclear Weapons would have expired in a few days. The agreement, which entered into force on February 5, 2011, limits the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States to 800 delivery systems and 1,550 operational nuclear warheads each. It was closed for a period of ten years and had the option of being extended.

Difficult negotiations

If it had not been expanded, there would have been no agreement for the first time in decades setting limits on the stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons. Russia and the US together possess about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. The government of Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump was unable to reach an agreement with Moscow on an extension after months of tough negotiations. Immediately after Biden’s swearing in, the Russian Foreign Ministry proposed on Wednesday last week that the contract be extended for five years without preconditions. Soon after it was announced that Biden was ready for such an extension as well.

Before taking office, Biden had declared that the treaty was a “strategic stability anchor” between the United States and Russia and could be the basis for new arms control agreements. The Pentagon emphasized last week that an extension would serve the defense of the United States. Americans would then be much safer.

One cannot afford to lose the tools for inspection and reporting obligations. An extension to 2026 would also give both parties enough time to explore new arms control agreements. Russia had spoken out from the start in favor of extending the current treaty and had warned of an arms race if it failed. Russia is ready for cooperation based on the principles of equality and mutual consideration of interests, it said last Wednesday.

Nuclear detonators must be limited

According to the US media, the Trump administration had insisted that the “freezing” of the number of all nuclear warheads in both countries be included in the treaty. The original version only defines the limit on the number of operational nuclear warheads. In addition, the previous US government had sought a multilateral agreement with the participation of China. Beijing has so far refused to negotiate its growing nuclear arsenal.

The danger of a war that was also fought with nuclear weapons was considered significantly greater during Trump’s term than in the past three decades. One of the reasons for this was the end of the INF Treaty on the abandonment of medium-range ground systems capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The United States dissolved the agreement in the summer of 2019 with the backing of its NATO partners, because they assume that Russia has been using a breached medium-range system called 9M729 (NATO Code: SSC-8). The INF treaty prohibited both parties from producing, testing, and possessing land-based ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5500 kilometers. (sda / dpa)

(sda / dpa)