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Moscow wants to resume arms control talks with the United States “as soon as possible,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Such negotiations are “in the interests of the whole world” and the peoples of both countries, Peskov told reporters at his Friday briefing, adding that the ball is now in the Americans’ court.
“Russia considers it necessary to resume disarmament negotiations as soon as possible, especially since the legal framework in the area of arms control has been significantly undermined, and not through the fault of the Russian Federation,” Peskov said. “The United States has closed its participation and, in fact, undermined the existence of this legal framework.”
Tensions over arms control treaties intensified after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Putin declared in February 2023 that he would suspend Moscow’s participation in the New START treaty — the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States.
As a countermeasure, Washington announced in June 2023 that it would suspend several provisions of the treaty, including not exchanging data with Moscow and not facilitating inspection activities on U.S. territories.
Peskov’s comments on Friday come as a bit of a surprise, as only a week ago Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the opposite, rejecting U.S.-Russian arms control talks because of Washington’s support for Ukraine.
But now, just days after the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, the mood in Moscow seems to be changing as Trump tries to forge a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. president directly blamed Putin for the fact that the war in Ukraine is still raging and threatened massive tariffs and sanctions on Russian products if he fails to make a deal to end the conflict.
