Russia has said it will abide by the limits of the expired nuclear deal if the US does so Nuclear News

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not say why he believed the US would respect the limits set out in New Start.

Russia has said it will abide by limits on its nuclear arsenal The Arms Control Treaty was terminated With the United States, as long as Washington is doing the same.

New START Treaty Expired earlier this monthThe world’s two largest nuclear-armed powers are leaving their strategic arsenals unrestricted for the first time in more than half a century, sparking fears of a new global arms race.

In an address to parliament on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was in no rush to begin developing and deploying more weapons – backtracking on comments his ministry made last week that Russia was no longer bound by the terms of the deal.

“We proceed from the fact that the moratorium announced by our president is effective, but only if the United States does not cross the line,” Lavrov said.

“We have reason to believe that the United States is in no rush to abandon these limits and that they will be observed for the foreseeable future,” he said, without elaborating on the basis of that assumption.

US President Donald Trump has rejected an offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to voluntarily abide by the limits set out in New START, saying he wants a “new, revised and modernized” treaty rather than an extension of the old one.

Russia has also hinted at striking a new arms control treaty.

Washington has been pushing to include China in the talks, pointing to China’s growing nuclear arsenal.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), from 2023 China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than any other country by about 100 new weapons a year.

However, Beijing has refused to negotiate with the US and Russia because it says it has only a fraction of their warhead numbers – roughly 600, compared to 4,000 each for Russia and the US.

As the agreement expires, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said China will not join bilateral arms-reduction talks.

Moscow says that if China is brought into the new deal, America’s nuclear allies, the United Kingdom and France, which have 290 and 225 warheads respectively.

New Start, first signed by US and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in 2010, limits each side’s nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployable strategic warheads – a nearly 30 percent reduction from the previous limit set in 2002.

Deployed weapons or warheads are those in active service and available for rapid use as opposed to those in storage or awaiting decommissioning.

It allowed each side to conduct on-site inspections of each other’s nuclear arsenals, although these were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic and have not resumed since.

Russia has ruled out inspections of its nuclear sites under the deal until 2023 as tensions with the US escalate over the nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

But it is said to be committed to the quantitative limits set.