A State Department spokesperson confirmed this week that Russia officially suspended its participation in the world’s biggest bilateral nuclear-weapons treaty.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also mentioned the treaty to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New Delhi, India, during what the spokesperson called a “rather brief encounter” between the two at the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting.
“This was a rather brief encounter that the Secretary took advantage of to convey clearly and directly messages that are important to the United States,” Ned Price, State’s spokesperson, said in a briefing with the press on Thursday in Washington.
Price did not characterize Blinken’s remarks to Lavrov, with whom Blinken had not spoken since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the second time in less than a decade Russia has invaded its neighbor.
Price confirmed on Wednesday that Russia had officially withdrawn from New START. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, told Russia lawmakers last week that Russia would no longer give U.S. inspectors access to Russian nuclear facilities as New START requires, though Moscow would continue to obey the treaty’s limits on deployed strategic nuclear warheads.
“I can confirm there has been an – the exchange of a diplomatic note between Russia and the United States,” Price told reporters Wednesday in Washington. “I think it is fair to say that what we have learned from that diplomatic note did not tell us anything we didn’t already know from the public statements that have emanated from Moscow.”
The State Department had hoped for more.
As recently as Monday, Russia was still sending the U.S. official communications about New START, and State officials in Washington were awaiting more details about what “suspension” of the world’s main nuclear arms-control treaty actually meant.
“We’re trying to follow up with them to truly understand what else could be included in the suspension and what could be continued, but right now we expect it will just be the launch notifications” for tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles under the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement of 1988, said Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, in an hour-and-fifteen-minute appearance at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington Monday on morning.
The U.S. and Russia routinely exchanged information under New START, including about the number of deployed warheads and launchers each country has.
Stewart’s 17-minute prepared remarks on Monday at the think tank, open to the press and the public for the occasion, were largely a continuation of the unofficial public volley between Moscow and Washington about the treaty.
Stewart summarized and repeated U.S. talking points that filtered out in media reports and official appearances last week, recounting Russia’s refusal since June 2022 to allow U.S. inspectors access to Russian nuclear-weapon sites and attempting to rebut a Russian foreign ministry statement last week that the U.S. violated New START by refusing to confirm that certain U.S. submarine ballistic missile launchers and heavy bombers had been modified to such an extent that they should not longer be counted as launchers under the treaty.
New START limits Washington and Moscow to 1,500 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. A heavy bomber counts as a single launcher under the treaty.
The U.S. and Russia suspended New START inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out in early 2020, but Stewart said the U.S. and Russia could have safely resumed in-person inspections as soon as last summer.
In his speech to Russian government officials last week, Putin said that the U.S. only wants to inspect Russian nuclear facilities so that Washington can pass on information about those facilities to Ukraine, which intends to attack the facilities.
In December, media around the world reported that Ukraine had attacked Russia’s Engels Air Force Base using uncrewed aerial vehicles. The Russian base, widely reported to be home to nuclear-capable Russian bombers that can also launch convention missiles, is near the banks of the Volga River by the Russian city of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast by road from Moscow and roughly 760 miles east by road from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Ukraine did not take credit for the December attacks on Engels.
Russia has said that it will not participate in New START while the U.S. seeks what President Joe Biden’s (D) administration has called the country’s “strategic defeat” in Ukraine.
Stewart on Monday said that the Biden administration would not stop pouring money, weapons and expertise into Ukraine just because Putin suspended New START. She also speculated that Putin tied the suspension of New START to the war in Ukraine to give Russia an excuse to continue to block the inspections required under the treaty.
Stewart also charged that Russia’s repeated allegations that certain U.S. heavy bombers and submarines were still capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite U.S. assertions to the contrary, could be disproven if Russian inspectors would consent to visit the states and see the modifications for themselves.
“We had worked out a transparency and confidence building measure with the Russians that only needs an inspection of the SLBM [submarine launched ballistic missile] launchers to allow them to confirm that it addresses their concerns,” said Mallory. “They’re alleging that we are breaching the treaty but they’re not allowing us to show them how we are not breaching the treaty.”
Mallory said that, despite the war in Ukraine and the heavy U.S. sanctions on Russia, Russian New START inspectors have multiple paths to enter the U.S. and conduct inspections.
“Russian state aircraft have viable air routes to transport inspectors to the United States and Russian inspectors can also use commercial air travel to reach the United States territory under the treaty,” Mallory said. “[T]here are no transit visa requirements, overflight restrictions, or financial or other sanctions that prevent Russia from fully exercising its treaty rights.”
