WASHINGTON — Russia today formally rejected a US proposal to re-open bilateral nuclear arms control talks due to Washington’s support of Ukraine — dashing the Biden administration’s hopes to begin dialogue to lay the foundation for a follow-on accord to the 2010 New START Treaty.
“I think this demonstrates Russia’s willingness to set aside arms control policy and their own arms control priorities and the cooperation that could benefit their security,” Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the White House National Security Council told the Center for Strategic and International Security (CSIS) today.
“They’re willing to set all of that aside in furtherance of their their goal of remaking the European geography, of preventing a further expansion of NATO, these other political priorities that they have placed out there,” he said.
At a press conference in Moscow this morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the US and its allies of seeking to escalate the war by encouraging Kyiv to use long-range missiles to attack targets on Russian territory.
“Amid a ‘hybrid war’ waged by Washington against Russia, we aren’t seeing any basis, not only for any additional joint measures in the sphere of arms control and reduction of strategic risks, but for any discussion of strategic stability issues with the US,” he said. “We firmly link such possibility to the West fully renouncing its malicious course aimed at undermining Russia’s security and interests.”
New START is the only remaining US-Russian treaty capping both sides’ nuclear arsenals, and will expire in February 2026. The treaty limits Russia and the US each to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles (meaning ICBMs, submarines and bombers).
Russia in February 2023 suspended its compliance with the treaty, citing US and NATO support for Ukraine following Moscow’s invasion in February 2022 as making it impossible for Russia to allow required inspections of its nuclear weapons facilities. However, President Vladimir Putin at the time also pledged to uphold New START’s weapons caps, and refrained from a formal withdrawal.
The US, for its part, also continues to adhere to the treaty, which the White House has made clear remains in US interests. At the same time, Washington did take countermeasures as a result of Moscow’s action.
In June White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan put forth informal ideas for re-instating bilateral nuclear discussions, codified in a formal proposal to Moscow in September, Vaddi explained.
The proposal’s “key focus” was “on discussing what we should do bilaterally to address New START compliance issues as Russia has suspended that treaty,” he said. It also suggested a path for the two sides to “think about a post-New START framework, and more broadly talk about managing nuclear risks at a time in which we’re dealing with a crisis in Europe where Russia has brandished using nuclear weapons on more than one occasion.”
Vaddi said that Moscow’s refusal to engage in bilateral talks “casts some doubt on Russia’s willingness to entertain a conversation about a New START follow-on or returning to New START compliance.” This fact, he added, is something that will need to be “baked into” Biden administration “thinking as we look at our own nuclear modernization, our own deterrence measures that we may want to take, and what the security environment could look like after 2026.”
That said, Vaddi did not rule out the possibility that Russia may want to return to the New START negotiating sometime closer to its February 2026 demise.
“I think there is potential for Russia to want to come to the table … close to 2026 timeframe,” he said. “I firmly believe that Russia, based on the fact that they extended the New START Treaty at the very beginning of the Biden administration and continues to adhere to the central limits, sees some interest in limiting us, at least, at the central strategic level, as we do in limiting them. And so because of that basic fact, I think that they will want to come back to the table at some point and ideally before expiration.”
On the other hand, Vaddi said there are no “guarantees” because Russia also can “be unpredictable.”
Meanwhile, he stressed, Washington has “left an open door to arms control engagement. We continue to offer bilateral engagement on nuclear arms control and managing strategic risks.”
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