Russia says it awaits US response on ‘important’ issue of expiring nuclear treaty

By Dmitry Antonov

MOSCOW, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Russia is still waiting for the United States to respond to President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to informally extend for a year the provisions of the ‍last remaining nuclear arms pact between the two countries, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

The New START treaty is due to expire in three weeks, and President Donald Trump has not formally responded to the offer that Putin made last September.

“No, we have not received a response. We are certainly awaiting ‌a response to Putin’s initiative; we consider this a ‌very important topic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

New START, which was signed by presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, sets limits on the strategic weapons that each side would use to target the other’s ​critical political and military centres in the event of a nuclear war. It caps the number of deployed strategic warheads at ‍1,550 on each side, with no more ​than 700 deployed ground- or submarine-launched missiles and bomber ​planes to deliver them.

It is the last in a series of treaties ‍dating back to the early 1970s that have enabled Moscow and Washington to maintain a stable nuclear balance even at times of acute international tension.

Trump told the New York Times this month that “if it expires, it expires”, and that he wanted to replace it ‍with a more ambitious treaty including China.

China, whose arsenal is growing fast but remains a fraction of the size of Moscow’s or Washington’s, says it ‍is unreasonable and ‍unrealistic to ask it to join three-way disarmament ​talks.

Asked about Trump’s comments on a successor treaty, Peskov ​said ⁠this would be good for everyone but would ‌involve a “very complex and drawn-out process”.

“As for our Chinese friends, their position is well known, and we respect it.”

Peskov reasserted Russia’s position that any discussion of strategic stability and security must take into account the nuclear arsenals of Britain and France.

(Reporting by Dmitry AntonovWriting by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew OsbornEditing ⁠by Andrew Osborn)