No concrete proposals for talks on replacing New START treaty

A senior diplomat said Moscow had not received any official proposals on replacing the New START arms control treaty.

Russia has not received any concrete proposals to resume talks on replacing the landmark New START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty despite recent remarks by US President Joe Biden on the matter, a senior Russian diplomat said on Friday. He said that the negotiations should be held without any preconditions.

The deputy head of Moscow's delegation to the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT review conference, Andrey Belousov, told reporters that saying that you re ready doesn't mean you are.

According to the diplomats, a real commitment to resume dialogue with Russia should be supported by concrete proposals, concrete signals that Moscow could view as a firm decision on the part of the US to resume close cooperation with Russia on a wide range of issues of strategic stability. He said that we are not receiving such signals at the moment, except for these declarative statements, including those from the highest level.

Belousov said that the timing of the US statements on arms control should also be taken into account.

The timing was chosen on purpose. The US president made a statement to the Conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in order to show that the US is still a state you can cooperate with and ready to engage in dialogue, the Russian representative said.

According to Belousov, Moscow does not think that the US is ready for constructive talks on the New START treaty that would accommodate the interests of all parties, at least not at this stage. He noted that Russia views the preliminary conditions for the dialogue set by Washington as unacceptable. Belousov said that it has not been formulated in black and white, but rather appears like a hint, as we believe in the US stance on resuming dialogue with Russia on a wide range of issues of strategic stability.

The diplomat noted that previous statements on the matter were more specific and understandable. There were specific conditions under which the United States would agree to resume this dialogue with us, he said. We consider them unacceptable no matter how these preconditions are phrased. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that the US had not made any requests for reopening the negotiating process. He said that the West has a habit of making announcements on the microphone and forgetting about them. Biden revealed earlier this month that Washington was ready to negotiate a new arms control framework with Russia that could replace the New START treaty when it ends in 2026. The landmark document, which entered into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 after Biden's inauguration, caps the number of strategic nuclear missiles and warheads held by Russia and the US.